


Meant to Find Each Other

by soothe_the_beast



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternative Timeline, Amnesia, Angst and Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Immortal Husbands, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Wives, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, M/M, Minor Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Mutual Pining, andromaquynh, hints at Book of Nile, kaysanova
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29440995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soothe_the_beast/pseuds/soothe_the_beast
Summary: Imagine an alternate timeline where Quýnh was found and rescued years before the events of the movie, which started a chain of events that separated our immortal family. How will they find each other again if they don't dream of each other anymore? How would they even know to try if they can't remember who they are? This is that story.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 18
Kudos: 40





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share  
> Just come back to the places where we used to go and I'll be there  
> Oh how can I forget you, when there is always something there to remind me  
> Always something there to remind me
> 
> I was born to love you and I will never be free  
> You'll always be a part of me  
> 'Cause there is always something there to remind me...

She woke with a start, and the first thing she sensed was the familiar sting of salt water in her eyes. Next came the cold. And then the darkness. The urge to gasp for breath was incredibly strong, but she fought it. She knew if she did, she would fill her lungs with nothing but water, and she’d quickly drown again. Again. She’d had more than enough of that. Five hundred years more than enough, give or take. And still more than enough today. This was it. She would not endure this torture any longer.   
  
She kicked her legs as hard as she could, not entirely sure they would propel her in the right direction. Was she swimming up, or down? It didn’t matter. She knew eventually, if she just kept kicking she would get to the surface. And eventually seemed a lot closer than it ever had before.   
  
As if by some miracle, the very moment the pain in her chest and her head could not allow her to suppress the urge to breathe any longer, she found herself breaking through into the cold autumn air over the North Atlantic. She’d dreamed this moment so many times. This was not quite the scenario. This was something different. This was something totally unexpected. This was something wholly terrifying.  
  
“Andromache!” She screamed with as much volume as her worn out vocal chords could muster.   
  
The fire was still raging nearby. The inexplicable structure towering above the water was breaking apart and crumbling down into the wake. Pieces of burning metal and acrylic were sinking and floating around her respectively, but there was no sign of the others anywhere.  
  
“Yusuf!” She cried out, reaching out to grab onto a bit of the building that was floating next to her. It sank beneath her weight. She coughed some of the seawater she nearly swallowed before shouting again. “Nicolò!”  
  
Desperately treading water, she turned this way and that to try and find any of them. About thirty meters away she thought she could see another figure. As she swam closer, she thought she recognized the man clinging onto a large chunk of red vinyl. She wasn’t completely sure who it was, but he resembled the man she’d dreamed of all those years.   
  
“Booker,” she called. When she was nearly there, he slipped down into the water. She dove down as well, but in the darkness she couldn’t see a thing.   
  
“Booker!” she shouted again, breaching the surface to take a quick breath before diving down again. It was no use. He’d clearly sunk much too far, much too quickly.   
  
He would be alright, she knew. Eventually. There were no binds on his hands, and he wasn’t trapped inside an iron box. He would drown. Maybe even a few times. But eventually he would find the will and the strength to fight his way to the surface and even if he died a few more times after that, he’d be able to swim to the shore. Eventually. They all would.  
  
And she knew that was her only way forward as well. She would swim. She would swim until her body gave out, and after that she would swim some more. And so would the others. And once they all made their way to dry land, they would look for each other.

They'd found one another before. They could do it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for stopping by this fic. Any comments you have are welcome and appreciated!


	2. Afghanistan

Bullets pierced and stormed through the afghan balouch, and Nile could hear the terrified cries of the women behind her, as Gita ushered them to safety.   
  
“Breach,” she instructed the others. Jordan stepped around her and kicked the door open, and she stepped through first, her M4 raised and ready. Dizzy and Jordan followed close behind. As she turned the corner, she caught sight of the man with the AK in his hands.  
  
“Stop!” She commanded, but the weapon was lifting higher in her direction. There was no time to hesitate. She fired. Two shots to his left shoulder. He dropped to the floor like a lead balloon.   
  
She took a couple steps closer to him to ensure he’d been neutralized, and then she saw the bullet wounds. She had not hit his shoulder, but his heart instead. He attempted to breathe, but blood splattered from his mouth through weakened coughs. _Shit_ , she thought.  
  
“Clear! Covering!” Jordan shouted from behind her.  
  
“Clear!” Dizzy responded in turn.   
  
Nile immediately dropped her weapon and approached the man. She grabbed hold of his rifle and pulled the safety lever before moving it completely out of his reach. She crouched closer to him and frisked him for more weapons.  
  
“Lima three,” she spoke into her radio, continuing to frisk, “this is India five. Contacts. Over.”   
  
He looked as young as she was. She hadn’t intended a mortal hit, but his chances didn’t look good. She looked up at the others.  
  
“J, go check on the women.”  
  
“On it,” Jordan responded.   
  
Nile was running on pure instincts. She'd trained years for this. Everything she'd done, she'd followed the book to the letter. But errors could still happen. She had a hard time blaming herself completely for the peril this man's life was in. It was the cost of war. But it was her hand that had done it, and when all was said and done, that left a wretched taste in her mouth.   
  
“Look at all this shit,” Dizzy marveled, taking in the paraphernalia all over the room. Guns. C4. Homemade bombs. “It’s a jackpot.”   
  
“Not if he bleeds out. They wanted him alive, remember?” Nile said, aggravation clear in her voice, but she didn’t mean to direct it at her fellow marine. She pulled a field dressing out her chest pack and ripped it open with her mouth, one hand kept firm pressure over the man’s wounds.   
  
“Do not touch me,” he said defiantly, blood spilling across his lips.   
  
“I’m trying to save you, man,” Nile insisted, but his protests became stronger, and she was having trouble keeping him still enough to treat him. She turned back to her friend. “Dizzy, a little help, please!”   
  
It happened too fast. She had been so focused on making sure the man didn’t die on this floor, she didn’t notice the knife he’d been lying on. She hadn’t seen him reach for it when her head was turned. Her first awareness of what happened was the cool sensation of the blade slicing across her neck. She felt the sting next. And then she was falling.   
  
“Nile!” She heard Dizzy call out to her as her helmet hit the hard floor. “Medic! Man down!”  
  
Nile reached for her neck, the helmet strap impeding her. Dizzy knelt beside her, and Nile’s first thought was about her friend's safety as well.   
  
“Jesus, Medic!” Dizzy screamed again, a little louder. She didn’t seem at all concerned about the man with the knife. He’d stopped moving completely.   
  
Dizzy quickly unbuckled Nile’s helmet and put one hand to Nile’s wound while the other carefully removed the helmet from her head. “Stay with me,” she was saying. Nile could feel the blood spilling out of her, her mind getting foggier by the second.   
  
“Oh my…” Dizzy’s cries were frantic and devastated. “Jesus, Nile, come on, stay with me. Look at me.”   
  
Nile shifted her eyes to her friend. Her hands clutched at the other woman’s sleeves. She was scared. She was heartbroken.  
  
She was dying.   
  
“Look at me,” Dizzy repeated, “you’re gonna be okay.”   
  
She started to feel like she was falling again. Falling through the floor, falling through space and time. She grasped for Dizzy again to keep herself here, but she couldn’t feel anything in her hands. She couldn’t control the grasp in her fingers. Her strength was fading fast.   
  
“Nile,” Dizzy called desperately. “Nile… You’re okay, it’s okay, stay with me, just look at me, look at me.”  
  
She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave her friends. Her mom. Her brother. They’d already been through so much. How could she put them through this again?   
  
Her senses were dimming. Dizzy’s voice seemed miles away. Her face was becoming a blur, obscured by a warm light. Was this Dizzy still? Or was it an angel who’d come to carry her away? It would be so easy to just let go.   
  
Just let go. _  
  
A boat hovered slowly atop the water, approaching the dock. A bearded man jumped out and tied a rope around the cleat.  
  
_ _Two people sat on a balcony, looking out into the commotion of the small city below. A bottle of whiskey rested on the table between them. They each held a tumbler in their hand. The man cast his head up into the sky. The woman looked at him.  
  
_ _A sandy haired man, stepped up to the guard and held his arms out. The other man waved a handwand over his body. A few moments later he pointed the man onward.  
  
_ _The bearded man hoisted a sack over his shoulder and carried it across the beach.  
  
_ _A dark-haired woman in sunglasses handed a stack of bills to a nefarious looking man.  
  
_ _The man in the airport sat down to tie his shoes before grabbing his bag and walking down the long wide corridor to his terminal.  
  
_ _The woman on the balcony poured herself another drink, while the man beside her spoke, an imperceptible story that made her smile.  
  
_ _Sunglasses obscured the dark eyes that gazed down the barrel of a revolver.  
  
_ Nile came to. She was bolt upright before she could even register consciousness. Her mind held onto the strangers she had envisioned for just a few more seconds, before she started taking in her surroundings instead. She was sitting on a gurney in a medical tent, very much alive. Instinctively she put her hand to her neck, where she felt a bandage.   
  
She’d survived. The medics had gotten to her, they’d kept her alive. Her wounds were clearly not as bad as she’d feared. She closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh of utter relief before dropping back down to the pillow.   
  
Scattered across the four corners of the world, five other immortals woke in a start from their slumber, images of the young American marine plaguing their minds.


	3. John and Charlie

John didn’t really dream. He’d had plenty of nightmares in the time he could remember. Most of them were about drowning, or almost drowning. But other than that, his subconscious mind had never really wandered into the realm of dreams. They’d never provided visions of the future he hoped for, or warped portrayals of his fears and anxieties, nor any clues about his past.  
  
He opened his eyes into the darkness of the room. His heart was racing, and his face was hot and damp with sweat. He let out a slow breath, trying to calm his nerves. He’d dreamed. He’d dreamed of a young woman. Technically a nightmare, he granted. She’d died.   
  
Or had she?   
  
That last bit… he tried to hold onto it as long as he could. His hand reached out beside him in the bed and found the sheets empty. He reached up for the lamp, illuminating the room, and the sleek form of the tall, brown-haired woman sitting on the edge of the bed pulling a tank top over her head and shoulders. She turned to him and gave him a small smile.  
  
“You alright?” He asked.   
  
“Mm.” She nodded. He blinked at her as she bent down to pull her pants over her feet.   
  
“You’re leaving?” He asked, turning to his side, propping his head up in his hand, elbow resting on the pillow. All thoughts of the young marine slipping from his mind.   
  
“If I go now, I can be back in time for feeding,” she explained rationally. She stood and hiked her pants up to her hips, buttoning and zipping up the fly. She gave him another smile, a smile communicating, _don't worry; this was nice_.   
  
“Can I see you again?” He asked.  
  
She sat back down on the bed and rested her head against the pillow next to his. She was quiet for a moment.  
  
“John…” She said with a sad quirk of her mouth.  
  
“Charlie…” He replied, mirroring her. He knew what was coming next. He was prepared for it. He didn’t necessarily disagree.   
  
“I’m really glad you called,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “I’m always happy to see you. But… we really shouldn’t get wrapped up in old habits.”  
  
“Old bad habits,” he suggested.   
  
“I wouldn’t say bad,” she admitted. “But I wouldn’t say good either.”   
  
“Charlie, I just want to see you again while I’m in town. That’s all. This _was_ nice but…”  
  
She cocked a curious eyebrow at what he planned to follow “but” with.   
  
“It’s not like I dragged you into this bed,” he reminded her.   
  
“No…” She agreed. “Like I said, old habits.”   
  
She sat up again and pulled her boots on one by one. This time John got out of the bed and pulled on his lounge pants. He peeked quickly through the thick curtains to the city outside. The summer sun was shining down on it, even in the middle of the night. He didn't think he'd ever get used to that. He poured himself a glass of water and drank it while she finished tying the laces of her riding boots.   
  
“How long are you in Reykjavik?” She asked casually, and turning back to him.  
  
“A few more days,” he said. She hadn’t asked what he was doing there. He supposed she must have known the sole purpose was only a reunion with her, same reason as always, every year or so.   
  
She was right. It didn’t do them much good to fall into old habits that ultimately led to nothing but regret and heartache. They’d tried to work it out together. They couldn’t. It was an inexplicable thing. He had no idea who he was, but he never felt more himself than when he was with her. He loved her. And she loved him. Somewhere among all the things in this life he felt completely unsure about, rested that clear, unshakeable truth.   
  
But it wasn’t as simple as that. They loved each other like family, how could they not? They’d been through so much together. Rescued from the water off the coast of Nova Scotia. Rehabilitated together (a miraculously quick physical recovery; psychological not so much). They’d stayed together for a long time in New Brunswick, naturally drawn to one another. But their souls always still cried out for more. She knew he longed for the type of family she wasn’t willing to give him. He knew she ached for something unknown.   
  
Eventually their paths separated, hers brought her to Iceland, where she found a passion in riding. His brought him to Montreal, and then eventually to Paris to try and find some clues about his past, maybe even some meaning in his life.   
  
It was no use. He always found his way back to her. Even if he knew she was a dead end. She was a dead end that gave him some peace. He was empty. But he was a little less empty when they were together.   
  
She never explicitly said it. But he knew she felt the same. She said it in other ways.  
  
“Well…” she nodded. “Call me before you leave. We’ll have dinner again.”  
  
He nodded. “It’s a date.”   
  
He dressed his upper body and walked her down the stairs to the lobby of his hotel, which he knew annoyed her a little. She’d never understood chivalry. It had always been so instinctive for him. But Charlie knew that most of his reasons for walking with her had much more to do with holding onto a few last seconds together than anything else. She was alright with that.   
  
She stepped out into the crisp air of early summer of the fully illuminated northern island city. As she walked the streets back to the car she’d parked a few blocks from the hotel, she smiled a little to herself. As perplexing as their relationship had always been, it did always do her good to see him. She unlocked the car door and sat down. Taking a moment before she turned on the car, she thought back to the dream that had woken her, the dream of the young marine. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was important to remember as many details of that dream as she could. Like an instinct. Like another old habit she couldn’t recall ever doing before. She pulled a notebook and pen out of her glove compartment, took a few moments to write a few specifics down.  
  
 _American Marine. Bubblegum. M4. AK-47. Freeman. Afghan. Dizzy. Dirt Floor. Clay walls. Medical tent. Pashtun knife. Complete laceration of the carotid artery.  
  
_ She stared down at the notebook at the details she couldn't even understand how she knew to note. She wrote down a few more:  
  
 _Fear. Heartache. Pain. Regret._  
  
She closed the book and stashed it back in the glove.   
  
John watched as she finally turned on the engine and pulled away up the street, making her way back to the stables she worked every day. As he made to turn back into the hotel, he took curious note of another car that had been parked across the street pulling out onto the road and following her up the hill. He glanced at his watch. Four AM. Curious, he decided, but not completely preposterous.   
  
Nothing to worry about. He went back inside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first wrote and published this chapter, I had completely forgotten about the long daylight hours in Iceland in the summer. I've since come back and revised the chapter a bit to account for this.


	4. Nicky

He’d fallen asleep in the hammock again. The past few nights had been so warm and humid, it felt only natural to try and catch some of the breeze coming off the sea from just a few blocks away. He didn’t intend to stay out here all night, but… the road to hell and all that.   
  
He was going to feel it later.   
  
He wiped his mouth a little. He’d had the strange sensation of warm liquid filling his throat. No, that’s not what it was. Blood was spilling from his neck. But it wasn’t his neck, it was someone else’s.   
  
He extracted himself from the hammock and went inside his modest rental home on the lagoon. He stepped into the bathroom to relieve himself. As he washed up, he stared into the eyes in his reflection in the mirror. Deep, dark brown. Just like hers.   
  
It was not the first time he’d had strange dreams he couldn’t make heads or tails of. But it was the first time in quite a while. He used to see horrific things all the time, in the early days. This one was the most vivid though.   
  
He ran his wet hand through his beard. It was getting long again. That was alright. The tourists liked the exotic look. And Sheila liked whatever the tourists liked so she’d stopped giving him grief about it. He glanced out the window. There was no hint of sunrise. It was still quite early. Possibly still late. He ought to try to get some sleep.   
  
He stepped out of the bathroom and gazed at his bed for a few moments. It hadn’t been slept in for days. It was a tempting idea.   
  
But as always, not quite as tempting as the call of the water. So instead, he grabbed his shoes and locked up on the way out. He strolled the dusty streets of Ambergris Caye at a leisurely pace, mind still thinking about the mysterious woman he'd dreamed about. Had he known her? Had he been there when she died? Just another person he didn’t save. Just another person he potentially got killed.  
  
Or worse… just another person he’d _had_ killed. Whoever he was before, the more time passed, the more he was certain he didn’t want to know that man.   
  
When he reached the resort beach, he quietly tossed his fishing gear into the boat and untethered it from the dock’s cleat. He hopped in and turned on the motor.   
  
A few minutes later and he was out on the open water of the Caribbean. Out on the open water was one of the few places he felt at ease. It was a funny thing. When he’d washed up on the shores of the Azores all those years ago, gasping for breath, bone tired of swimming for God knew how long, he never thought he’d want to see the water again.   
  
But it called to him. There was something mystical in the way the colors danced together in deep greens and true blues, oftentimes mysteriously melting to gray. There was a comfort in it he couldn’t put words to.   
  
It was the only place he could be still.  
  
He steered the boat for nearly an hour, just to feel the wind in his face, and to hear it rush past his ears. To quiet the thoughts in his head, just a little. He slowed the motor and turned off the engine just as he could see the sun peeking up over the eastern horizon. He dropped anchor and watched the sunrise for a few minutes.   
  
He’d used quite a bit of gas. He’d have to have some reason to show for it when he returned the boat to the resort, so he pulled out his fishing gear and sat himself on the edge of the bow, legs dangling over, settling in for a nice relaxing morning, just him and a fishing pole. He stayed out there for two more hours, and earned himself quite an impressive catch.   
  
As he expected, Sheila, his short, fire-haired, middle-aged boss, greeted him with a bemused smile when he returned the boat and his bounty. She’d clearly noticed the missing boat when she arrived that morning, she didn’t seem overly concerned about where it might have been.   
  
“You know that’s not your job anymore, right?” She informed her employee in her thick Texan accent, standing on the edge of the dock reaching out for the rope to tie to the cleat. It was true, Nicky had first been hired as a fisherman for the resort, but she’d recently promoted him to captain the boats for the dive excursions.   
  
“I couldn’t sleep,” he explained simply.   
  
“It would probably help if you tried a bed,” she chided him. “You’re not exactly a kid, you know? You're going to destroy your back.”  
  
“Is this you complaining about the extra fish?” He asked, stepping onto the dock.   
  
“Nope,” she held her hands in the air, innocently. “Just as long as you can still do your job.”  
  
“You have nothing to worry about there,” Nicky insisted.   
  
“I know, Chico,” she said with an adoring smile. “Come here.”  
  
She grabbed him around the neck and pulled him to her height so she could plant a wet, sloppy kiss on his cheek. He’d worked at the resort for nearly three years now. It was the longest he’d stayed anywhere. After leaving Portugal he’d spent some time in Senegal. Then Dakar. After that he travelled to Kathmandu. The Maldives. Malta. Singapore. Chile. And now Belize. He’d never stayed longer than eighteen months in one place. He knew it was getting to be time to move on again soon.   
  
“Sheila,” Another young man called to her as he approached them. “Hey, Nicky!”  
  
“Hola Carlos,” Nicky replied with a grin. How’d your date go last night?”  
  
“She loved the beach,” he told Nicky. “Thanks for the tip. Sheila, the ice maker behind the bar is acting funny again.”  
  
“I’m going to have to replace that darned machine soon,” she lamented.  
  
“Want me to take a look?” Nicky asked.    
  
“No, I know the trick,” Sheila insisted. “I think I can get one more resurrection out of it. Carlos you take Nicky’s catch up to the kitchen, will you?”  
  
“You got it, boss,” Carlos said, lifting the bucket of fish and carrying it back to the resort.    
  
“I’ll see you later,” Nicky said to Sheila, kicking his shoes off and picking them up to carry on his walk.   
  
“Where are you going?” She asked him, hands shifting to her hips.   
  
“I need a shower,” he told her, walking past her, “I’m ripe.”   
  
“Your shift starts in twenty minutes,” she called out to remind him.   
  
“I’ll be there,” he called back without turning, raising an assuring hand in the air.   
  
He was getting attached to this place, and to these people. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay, he thought. Maybe it would be nice to set down roots and be a part of a family, unconventional as it might be.   
  
As if right on cue, the vision of a knife cutting across the neck of a young marine flashed before his eyes, immediately tailed by visions long forgotten. A gun raised to the back on someone’s head. A bullet firing and the sound of his own voice crying out in terror. A bowie knife piercing and twisting into someone’s side. Hands gripping around someone’s head and snapping their spine.   
  
No. There were some things he was not meant to have. And family, conventional or otherwise, was definitely one of those things. 


	5. Mario

“Attenzione, appello finale per l'imbarco del volo 710 per Buenos Aires.”  
  
His eyes snapped open at the muffled sound of the flight attendant’s voice on the intercom.”  
  
“Attention passengers, final boarding call for flight 710 to Buenos Aires,” the voice repeated this time in English.   
  
Mario sat up in the stiff airport seat and rubbed his eyes. He glanced around. Across the terminal, he watched travelers standing in line, one by one walking through the doorway above which read the words "Buenos Aires."  
  
He checked his watch. Still fifteen minutes until his flight would begin boarding. Good thing he was a light sleeper. He hadn't intended to pass out.  
  
Absentmindedly, his hand came up to the left side of his neck, rubbing away the latent sting that woke him from his sleep. It wasn’t the intercom announcement, after all. He let out a small huff of breath in bemusement. He’d had a strange dream, he'd suddenly remembered. The details were slipping away fast, but he recalled weapons everywhere. The makings of what looked like a homemade bomb. And then there was the knife across the throat. He rubbed his neck again. _Just a dream_ he told himself.   
  
He glanced back at the crowd boarding. He looked around too at the people in his immediate vicinity. Couples. Families. Lone travelers too. Any one of them could be a connection to his past, in some minute way. Or perhaps in some monumental way.   
  
But not one of them gave him a passing glance. He guessed he had that kind of face.   
  
Even the security agent who’d questioned the name on his passport barely looked at his face longer than a moment, and that was his job. He was more interested in the implausibility of his name.   
  
“Mario Rossi?” He’d remarked incredulously, staring down at the booklet. “ _Really_?”  
  
"There’s bound to be a few here and there,” Mario replied politely.   
  
“So it seems,” the guard responded. “I’ve never actually met one before though, and I’ve worked here ten years. Your parents weren’t very original, were they? That’s your real name?”  
  
Mario gave the man a light smile, as he handed his passport back to him.   
  
“It’s very doubtful,” he admitted, taking the book back and stashing it in his back pocket. “But it is my legal name.”  
  
The guard quirked an eyebrow and frowned slightly with a nod. He waved Mario on through the metal detector, and signaled to his colleague that this particular man should get an extra check over.   
  
He’d expected it. It was fine.   
  
Sitting in the terminal, Mario pulled his passport out of his back pocket and then found his boarding pass from the front zipper of his carry on bag, as well as an old photograph. The name stared up at him from both documents.   
  
Mario Rossi was what the bureaucrats had called him in the limbo years. He’d washed up on the beach near Nantes, muttering in Italian, or at least what the locals thought they’d recognized as Italian. He was nursed to his strength and health for a few weeks in a French hospital, where they’d contacted the embassy in Rome, in the hopes that they’d be able to identify him, since he didn’t match the description of any missing persons in France. It was the same story in Italy, but they approved his restitution in Rome while his case was worked out. It took the better part of three years, but they finally granted him citizenship papers after an exhaustive search that ultimately turned up nothing, and a bit of a song and dance on his part to demonstrate his value to the country. In the end, he kept the name.   
  
He’d had no clues about his past. No birth certificate. No identifiable scars or tattoos. Seemingly no one looking for him. The only thing he had on his person when he'd washed up on the beach was an old photograph. It was fairly weathered from its time in the water, but Mario could still make out the subject of the photograph, two men in military uniforms sitting with a young boy, it looked to be outside of Auschwitz at the end of the war. The second world war, specifically.   
  
One of the men, Mario thought, looked an awful lot like him. The photo had gone fuzzy, but he could make out enough to note this much. The man's hair was shorter and he was clean shaven, but other than that the resemblance was remarkable. Same sandy hair. Same chiseled jaw. He even looked like he might have the same mole, in the same spot as Mario. Perhaps the man could have been a relative. A grandfather. He tried for a long time, but he never had any luck discovering the man's identity.   
  
The other man in the picture was even more of a mystery. He had thick dark curly hair and a full beard. Just like the first man, Mario had no idea who he could be and had the same luck seeking out any clues about his identity.

Until he saw the magazine ad last week. And this was the whole point of this journey. Perhaps he was about to find out.   
  
“ _Attenzione passeggeri, ora ci imbarchiamo sul volo 1099 per Belize City_ ,” a new voice came on over the intercom. “Attention passengers, we are now boarding flight 1099 to Belize City.”  
  
Mario stashed the photo and his passport into his bag and stood with his boarding pass ready. He pulled the bag strap across his chest and made his way to stand in line. At the front, he handed the boarding pass to the flight attendant for him to scan.   
  
“ _Grazie_ ,” Mario said politely.   
  
“ _Buon viaggio_ ,” the flight attendant replied, handing him back his boarding pass.   
  
Mario stepped onto the jetway through the door, under which the sign read, “Belize.”


	6. Retrieval

Quýnh stood on the balcony of her penthouse suite and gazed out over the city. She lit a cigarette and took in one slow and steady drag. Her heart was racing, partly because she was still experiencing the poor, new, young immortal’s first death, and partly…  
  
Partly because this was her chance. This was the lifeline she’d been waiting for. This new immortal was her link to the others. After how many years searching for them… nine? Ten? She’d come so close to giving up tonight. Tonight, like so many other times before, after yet another flimsy lead brought her to yet another dead end here in Busan, she was nearly resigned to hopelessness.   
  
This time though… This time she knew.   
  
She took in another quick drag before putting out the cigarette. She turned on her phone and called one of her contacts.   
  
“Raul.” She spoke calmly. “I need you to get me on the next flight to Kabul.”  
  


***  
  


_I will always love you how I do  
__Let go of a prayer for you  
__Just a sweet word  
__The table is prepared for you...  
  
_The keyboard built up, reverberating like an organ, transporting her back home to South Side Gospel Church. She was sitting there in the pew. Her mom to her left. Brother to her right. Jesus in her heart.   
  
“Corporal Freeman.” Her sergeant’s voice took her right out of her daydream, and she was back on the base. She opened her eyes and stood slowly, pulling the earbuds out of her ears, as he approached with a staff sergeant at his side. “Been looking for you. Wheels up on your ride.”  
  
She nodded to him.  
  
He turned abruptly from her and both men walked with purpose toward the tarmac. Nile pocketed her phone and earbuds and followed close behind them. As she approached the plane, she watched while two privates finished emptying the cargo hold of medical supplies. Jordan stood next to the bottom of the access stairs. She’d carried Nile’s bags out to the plane for her; Nile had left them back in her bunk. Just before she boarded the plane she exchanged a quick glance with her friend. J gave her an assured nod. Nile wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so she didn’t. She turned to the plane and climbed the stairs to board.   
  
The craft was small, a C-12F Huron. Only a pilot for the crew. Two long gurney’s lined the length of the cabin, leaving very little leg room in front of the two rear seats that remained.  
  
“Room up here if you want,” the pilot offered. Nile had never sat in the cockpit before. She figured why not. She might not get the chance again. She took a seat in the copilot’s chair.   
  
“You’re not gonna need me to navigate, are you?” Nile asked in a facetiously nervous tone.  
  
“Nope,” the pilot answered. She turned a few switches on the console. Nile let out a heavy sigh and leaned back against her seat.   
  
A few minutes later, she watched as the base grew smaller and smaller below while the plane ascended. She didn’t know when she’d be back. She didn’t know _if_ she’d be back.   
  
Landstuhl. What were they going to do to her in Landstuhl, she wondered? What would they find out in Landstuhl? What exactly had happened to her? Nile couldn’t shake the fact that she hadn’t imagined the seriousness of her injury. It wasn’t just a scratch. And even if it had been, a scratch doesn’t exactly heal quite that fast. There wasn’t a trace of a wound. Not a trace of a scar. And there definitely should have been. Even if Nile couldn’t be objectively sure how bad the wound had been, Dizzy and J sure looked scared when they saw her. And they looked even more scared when they saw her completely healed.   
  
“You alright over there?” The pilot asked. Nile looked at her. She had her head turned to Nile with a questioning look. She wore a Marine uniform. A captain by the look of her insignia. When Nile didn’t answer she nodded her head and shifted her eyes in the direction of Nile’s knee. Nile looked too. It was bouncing up and down in quick little nervous jolts. Nile rested her hands on her legs as if this were the only way to calm her nerves. As if her legs were completely separate from her mind’s control.   
  
“Yeah,” she answered unconvincingly. It was the first she’d spoken in over an hour. She’d been completely lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize how far they must have travelled. They were in the mountains now. She looked down out the window and marveled at their beauty. And then she had the sudden urge to throw up.   
  
She swallowed the urge and leveled herself with another deep breath.   
  
“No,” she finally admitted. “No, not really.”   
  
"There's a barf bag under the seat."  
  
"That's not really it," Nile answered her.  
  
The pilot considered Nile thoughtfully for a few moments.  
  
“Want to talk about it?” She asked.   
  
Nile just stared at her. She didn’t know what she could say. The pilot shrugged, taking Nile’s silence as need for persuasion.   
  
“I’m a good listener,” she explained. “We have another hour until you change planes.”   
  
“...I think I’m losing my mind,” Nile finally said.   
  
The pilot watched her, carefully. Her expression was not without sympathy though.   
  
“Is that why they’re sending you to Germany?”  
  
“Maybe…” Nile said, quietly. She turned and looked back out the window. Maybe she had imagined it all. Maybe the trauma of her first kill had messed with her mind that much. Maybe all she needed was some good psychiatric treatment and then she’d be good to go from there. Jesus, was that really the best-case-scenario she was hoping for?   
  
“Hm...” the pilot responded, her eyes back on the sky ahead of them. “But it isn’t though, is it?”  
  
Nile looked at her, curiously. The pilot turned back and looked Nile dead in the eye.  
  
“They’re sending you to Germany because you died,” she said. “And then you came back.”  
  
The hairs on Nile’s arms stood up at attention. Her heart raced. Her stomach dropped. She stared at the pilot. It was the first time she’d really looked at her, long and careful. She’d seen her face before. But where?   
  
“Who are you?” She asked, tentatively.   
  
“I’m Quýnh ,” the pilot answered simply. “And I’m here to rescue you.”   
  
The plane took a sudden, steep dive, so steep that Nile instinctively braced her hand against the ceiling of the cockpit to keep from floating up into it, should her safety belt have failed to do its job. She looked ahead. The mountains were coming much closer into view.  
  
“What are you doing?” she asked the other woman, frantically.   
  
“Don’t worry about it,” the pilot who called herself Quýnh responded, casually. She was pressing the control wheel forward with a good deal of force. Nile _was_ worried. The mountain peaks in front of them were getting closer and closer. Nile was certain they were moments from impact. She didn’t know what else to do, so she tried to grab the wheel from Quýnh, but the other woman was quicker than she was. With her right hand, she struck Nile in the side of the neck, and then Nile knew only darkness.   
  


***  
  
  


She gasped for breath and flailed her body onto its side. She coughed, repeatedly for a few minutes. It didn’t help that she was inhaling dirt with every gasp in. She lifted herself higher, resting on hands and knees now. She worked to slow her breath, evening it out. This gave way to the realization that she felt like she was on fire. Her arms and back were burning. She could hardly feel her legs at all. She glanced down at herself. Her uniform was in complete tatters. Charred holes revealed reddened patches of skin. She flipped back over and collapsed onto her back in pure exhaustion.  
  
“Here,” a voice uttered, and a set of clean clothes landed on her torso. She opened her eyes and sat herself up a little. She looked up at the pilot, now also dressed in civilian attire. She was lighting a cigarette.   
  
“What happened?” Nile asked her.   
  
“I rescued you from a plane wreck,” the woman called Quýnh explained.   
  
Nile turned around as much as she could. Behind her the Huron was in complete ruin against the side of a rock face, burning.   
  
“A plane wreck you caused,” Nile countered, turning back to her.  
  
“Yup,” Quýnh agreed, letting out a puff of smoke.  
  
“On purpose,” Nile added, as she stood, holding onto the clean clothes.   
  
“Yes,” Quýnh nodded. “You’re welcome.”   
  
“What exactly am I supposed to be thanking you for?” Nile asked.   
  
Quýnh shrugged.   
  
“Not many would survive this,” she admitted. Quýnh could think of four others she knew. Anyone else in the world would have had to be extremely lucky. “Now you’ll be declared dead instead of AWOL. Of the two alternatives to medical torture in a military lab… I’d take the one when they’re not looking for you.”   
  
Nile stared at her. Quýnh nodded at the clothes in her hand.   
  
“Get changed,” she instructed, turning her back to Nile. “We should get going.”  
  
“You think I’m going anywhere with you?” Nile pulled open her uniform on top and quickly changed out of her marine t-shirt into the thermal Quýnh had given her.   
  
“Yup,” Quýnh answered simply, staring out into the mountains that surrounded them. “I do.”  
  
Nile stepped her legs out of the uniform and pulled the jeans on. She shook her head.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because you’re scared, and you’re confused,” Quýnh said knowingly, looking up into the sky. She turned back to Nile and paused, looking her over, appraisingly. “And believe it or not I can help you.”  
  
Nile didn’t respond.  
  
“And because... you can help me.”  
  
Nile actually scoffed at this remark.  
  
“What makes you think I’d help you?”  
  
“Remember when I just saved you from military experimentation?” Quýnh asked, pointing at the plane.   
  
“By almost getting me killed…” Nile countered.   
  
“Nile,” Quýnh said, calmingly as she took a few steps closer to her, her hands out as a show of peace.   
  
“Stay away from me,” Nile backed up, defiantly.   
  
Nile wished she’d thought to grab her knife from her uniform. This Quýnh had probably already lifted it though. She did the only thing she could think of. She raised her fists the second Quýnh was close enough to touch her. If she’d expected Quýnh to counter the move with a hand-to-hand fight, she was sorely mistaken.   
  
Somehow, faster than Nile could even understand, but still taking enough time to communicate complete and utter exasperation in the process, Quýnh had pulled a gun, and was pointing it directly at Nile’s head.   
  
“I’m sorry,” she said after a pause, “but I have lost the luxury of patience.”   
  
“I thought you needed my help,” Nile reminded her.   
  
“I do.”  
  
“Then I’m supposed to believe you’re gonna shoot me?” Nile asked, defiantly.   
  
“Yup,” Quýnh responded. She shifted her aim downward slightly and fired. She shot Nile in her left shoulder, at significantly close range. The bullet tore through her like a hungry, feral animal.   
  
“Fuck!” Nile screamed, dropping down to the ground, and clutching her shoulder with her other hand to slow the bleeding. It didn’t do much good. 

Quýnh slipped her gun back into its holster and crouched down beside Nile. She watched the wound for a few seconds as Nile moaned in pain. The young Marine was boring her eyes into Quýnh in complete shock, and utter scorn.  
  
“You’re going to be fine,” Quýnh spoke to her the way her youth soccer coach used to after she'd skinned her knee in a game, or some other equally minor injury. Nile’s face increased her scorn. Quýnh almost smiled. She shifted her eyes to Nile’s wound and nodded. Nile looked as well.   
  
The bleeding had stopped. The wound had… somehow shrunk. Not shrunk. It was still shrinking. It was healing inexplicably fast. The pain had decreased significantly. The flesh around the hole was knitting together. The redness of her newly grown skin turned to pink, to blue. Then, excepting for the dried blood that still remained, it was like there’d been no wound at all. Nile clutched her shoulder and wiggled it a little. No pain. No weakness. She stared in complete amazement.   
  
“Now, I could have shot you in the head,” Quýnh admitted, “and you’d be just as fine as you are now, but it would have taken longer, and I wanted you to actually see what you’re capable of.”  
  
Nile turned and stared at her for a few moments.  
  
“But I’m sorry about the shirt,” Quýnh added sincerely. She quirked a lighthearted smile.   
  
“What’s happening to me?” Nile asked quietly.  
  
“You’re immortal,” Quýnh told her. “Same as me. That’s how we survived a plane crash. It's how your burns are already gone. It’s how you were able to heal a bullet wound in less than a minute.”  
  
Nile looked down the the spots on her arms that had been covered in burns only minutes ago. She looked back to Quýnh and continued to stare.   
  
“That’s why after that Afghani man sliced your throat…” Quýnh continued, “after you bled out on the floor of that hovel and died in your friend’s arms, you woke up again in a medical tent without so much as a scratch.”   
  
“How do you know all that?” Nile asked in bewilderment.   
  
“Because I saw it,” Quýnh said. “In a dream.”  
  
Nile’s eyes narrowed slightly. She pressed her mouth together in thought.  
  
“You dreamed me too, right?” Quýnh asked her.   
  
“...Yeah.”   
  
“And there were others?” Quýnh worked hard to keep the hope out of her voice.   
  
Nile didn’t answer. She was still so completely stunned.   
  
“You saw the others too, right?” This time, Quýnh's desperation betrayed her just a little.   
  
“...Yeah.”  
  
Quýnh swallowed, pushing down the lead she thought she could feel rising in her throat.   
  
“Good,” she replied quietly, as collectedly as she could manage.   
  
She stood and wiped the dirt from her knees. She held a helpful hand out to Nile, who took it, somewhat tentatively. She pulled the young, new immortal to her feet and gave her an assuring nod of the head.   
  
“We really do need to go,” she suggested rationally. She turned to gather a small bag from the ground, pausing a moment to pull a button down jacket out and handing it to Nile, who donned it over her new, but now damaged shirt. Quýnh started out along foot trail that led the way down the mountain toward a small village below. Nile followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had waaaaaaaaaay more fun writing this chapter than I expected to, considering I'm a Joe and Nicky Stan... I really enjoyed working with Quỳnh and Nile together. Looking forward to playing with these two some more. 
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos. Please feel free to leave a comment if you so wish!


	7. Joe

“Greece?”   
  
Nicky looked up from the newspaper he’d been doodling on. The crossword puzzle was long since complete and he’d taken to drawing little cartoons along the edges.   
  
“No,” he sighed, looking out the window of the resort’s activity center. The wind was gusting past the palm trees at a speed he could recognize too well. No SCUBA excursion today. He was stuck behind the desk hanging out with Raya, whose favorite pastimes included pestering Nicky about his mysterious past. Today’s topic, where he was from, originally. She’d asked, and he’d told her to guess. The guessing had continued far longer than he expected her to carry on.   
  
“Israel.”   
  
He paused and looked at her, considering. She met his eyes expectantly.   
  
“No.” She sighed and he grinned a little in spite of himself. He didn’t exactly love her brazen inquisitiveness, but her suggestions did offer him the chance to consider them as possibilities. Israel was definitely not right, but… it stirred something in him he thought felt significant.   
  
“Well, I give up,” she said, finally.  
  
“Good.”   
  
The bell above the door rang briefly, and Nicky felt a sudden flutter in his chest. He brought his hand to his sternum and rubbed it slightly.   
  
“Good morning,” Raya was saying.  
  
“Good morning,” was the reply from a quiet and soothing voice with a European accent. Nicky looked up. A man was approaching the desk. He had light brown hair that fell a little past his ears, which each sported a small hoop. He had a strong jawline which could be discerned beneath the stubble on his face. His eyes… transfixing, green like the sea, left Nicky frozen on the spot.  
  
Raya glanced back and forth between the two of them. The man held Nicky’s gaze steadily.  
  
"What can we do for you today?” Raya asked, breaking the long silence that hung in the air.   
  
“I was hoping to get out for a dive,” the man said gently. His voice was calm and serene, yet tactile, like it could reach out and touch you. He held up a flyer for one of their most popular excursions. “Blue Hole?”   
  
Nicky continued to stare lamely at the man. Raya looked up at him, and poked him discreetly. He blinked a couple times and nodded.  
  
“I’m your guy,” he heard himself say, and frowned momentarily at his awkward choice of words. Immediately back to business. “Unfortunately we’re not able to head out today. Water’s too choppy.”   
  
“Oh,” the resort guest looked disappointed, but nodded in understanding.   
  
“You can try back again tomorrow,” Nicky suggested helpfully. “The weather should be better.”  
  
“I will,” he responded with a subtle smile, an impossibly cute fraction of a smile. “Thanks.”   
  
Nicky returned the smile in spite of himself, and once again the three of them stood on the spot in complete silence. Once again, Raya shifted her eyes back and forth between the two men, who seemed completely unaware of her presence.   
  
“Anything else?” She asked the guest after a few moments.   
  
“Yes,” he admitted. “Do you sell sunglasses? I broke mine on the trip out from the airport.”   
  
Nicky gestured toward the sunglasses kiosk by the register. The stranger thanked him quietly and proceeded to browse the selection they had. Nicky returned to his doodles on the newspaper, and tried to keep his eyes from darting back to the man. He tried on one or two pairs. Each time he looked up at Raya who offered her opinion. Grimace and a shake of the head. He finally found a pair she approved of and she communicated as much with a thumbs up.  
  
“I’ll take them,” he said. He pulled a wallet out of his back pocket while Raya rung him up at the register. He handed her a card and glided the glasses over the front of his head, pushing his hair back underneath. He gave that same ghost of a smile to Raya after she returned his card.   
  
“Thanks,” he said to her. He cast a quick glance back at Nicky before turning to head back out the door.   
  
“See you tomorrow,” Raya called out to him. He turned and pushed the door open with his back, pulling the glasses down over his eyes.   
  
“ _Ciao_ ,” he said, flashing a full on grin. Nicky’s stomach did a backflip.   
  
“ _Ciao_ ,” Raya repeated. She grinned as well, but turned quickly to Nicky, looking him up and down.   
  
“So…” she said. “What was that?”  
  
“What was what?” Nicky asked nonchalantly, keeping his eyes on the door. He folding his newspaper absentmindedly while she continued to stare at him. He glanced her way.   
  
“That… movie moment you just shared with the hot Italian guy,” she answered incredulously. “Italy?”  
  
Nicky considered her for a moment.   
  
“...No.” No, he was not from Italy. And she was wrong. “There was no movie moment.”  
  
“Whatever you say,” she said in a singsong voice. “ _I’d_ watch it though.”  
  
Nicky ran his hands over his mouth and rubbed his beard in thought. He looked out the door again, where the man had disappeared. Those were feelings he hadn’t felt in a very long time. Not in recent memory. Not in any memory for that matter.   
  
“He forgot his receipt,” he heard Raya saying quietly, almost to herself. Nicky turned to her. She was holding a small bit of white paper in her hand. Quickly he took the slip and walked around the desk toward the door. He jogged a little bit on the beach to catch up with the man, who walked casually along the surf.   
  
“Hey,” he called out. The man stopped and turned to him. Nicky slowed his jog to a walk as he approached, glancing briefly at the receipt before holding it out to him. “You forgot this… Mario.”  
  
Mario nodded, and took the slip from Nicky.  
  
“Thanks,” he said, gratefully. They stood face to face at the edge of the water for another moment. Another movie moment, Raya would have called it. Nicky shook his head to try and snap himself out of it.   
  
“I’m Joe,” he said, reaching his hand out to exchange a polite shake with Mario. He blinked. “… Nicky. I’m Nicky.”

Mario smirked. “Are you sure?”

Nicky laughed nervously.  
  
“Yeah...I have no idea why I just said that,” he admitted. “My name is Joe. Nicky!”

 _What the hell was that?_  
  
Mario pursed his lips together, as if stifling a laugh himself. He took Nicky’s hand and shook it.   
  
“Well, it’s nice to meet you Joe-Nicky,” he said charmingly. Nicky laughed again. He arrested all thought and motion when his eyes landed on Mario's again. Even through the dark lenses they managed to pierce something deep inside of him. The flutter in his heart repeated. They remained fixed in that moment, hands clasped, eyes aligned, long enough that Nicky became aware of the sound of his pulse.  
  
“I hope you enjoy your stay,” he finally said graciously, dropping Mario's hand.   
  
“I'm enjoying it already,” Mario responded. He gave Nicky a nod and continued his walk along the water. Nicky watched him for another minute, before heading back to the activity center.  
  
As he stepped back through the door, Raya was waiting for him, watching with a knowing smirk. He ignored it for a few minutes, but she kept it pointed firmly at him until he had to acknowledge her.   
  
“What?” he said, defensively.   
  
“I see your deal now,” she said, nodding in waves, as if dancing along to music no one could hear. “Explains soooooo much.”   
  
“Explains what exactly?”  
  
“Why you never bat an eye at me,” she responded, leaning backwards onto the counter, her lips pursed, her eyes steady on him.   
  
Nicky looked her over. He was not ignorant of her attempts to flirt with him over the past couple years. It was harmless most of the time. He’d been fairly straightforward, though not unkind, in his declination. She took it well. But she never gave up the ritual.  
  
“You’re a child,” he insisted, gently. It was true; she’d been barely legal when they met.   
  
“You’re not exactly a senior citizen, Nicky…” she reminded him. The name Nicky whisked him away momentarily to the awkward slip of words he’d had outside. Where did the name Joe come from? Raya was looking up at him, clearly alert to his daze. “Why, how old _are_ you?”  
  
Nicky snapped back to the present. He looked at her seriously.  
  
“Too old for you.”  
  
“More like too gay for me,” she teased with a smirk. He looked at her pointedly, and she held her hands up in surrender. “I won’t say anything.”  
  
Nicky considered her for a moment and felt his lips quirking into a smile.  
  
“… I don’t care if you say anything,” he said to her. And he didn’t. “I’m not ashamed.”   
  
“Good,” she said. “You deserve good things. Go get that Italian ass.”   
  
Nicky chuckled.  
  
“Isn’t there anyone else you need to harass around here?” He asked her, in playful desperation.  
  
“Not anymore,” she insisted. They both laughed.   
  
He sat back down in the chair behind the counter and flipped the newspaper over, looking for a clean spot for a fresh doodle. His pen was sketching two orbs of some kind. A few short minutes passed unnoticed while he and Raya continued to chat about unimportant things. Details filled in. Two orbs had turned into two eyes. Two piercing, magical, mind-stopping eyes.


	8. The Others

When they reached a small village at the base of the mountain, Nile discovered they’d crashed somewhere in Iran. Just outside of Tehran, Quýnh had explained. They hitchhiked their way north to the shores of the Caspian Sea, where Quýnh endeavored to find them a way out of the country. She’d paid their way (with a small side of threatening) on a freighter that would take them north, but the captain was adamant they both needed to show their papers. Quýnh had all the appropriate documents she needed, but Nile’s had been left back in the wreckage of the plane crash. Quýnh didn’t seem overly concerned about this.   
  
“Here,” she said abruptly to Nile who was waiting for her at the port of a small city. She tossed her a Malian passport, and upon inspection Nile could see the picture of a young African woman.   
  
"This supposed to look like me?”   
  
“Nobody’s going to look at the picture,” Quýnh said, walking past her down the docks.   
  
“Where’d you get this?” Nile asked sternly, following. Quýnh didn’t answer. Nile sped up and reached a hand out to her. “Some poor woman gonna get stuck in Iran without a way home now?”  
  
“Some poor woman has an embassy here that can help her,” Quýnh argued. “She’ll be fine.”  
  
A few minutes later Nile was passing through the narrow corridors in the freighter, following Quýnh closely. They reached a small cabin that had little more space around the two bunks. Quýnh tossed her bag onto the top bunk and proceeded to take in as many details of her surroundings as she could.   
  
“Where are we going?” Nile asked, taking a seat on the bottom bunk.   
  
“Baku,” Quýnh answered absentmindedly. She was pulling the curtain back from the port hole.  
  
“Baku?”  
  
“Azerbaijan.”   
  
“Why?”  
  
“Why what?” Quýnh responded, a little shortly casting a hard look at Nile.   
  
Nile blinked. Quýnh's voice communicated annoyance, but her expression said something else. She looked tense, anxious… worried?   
  
“...Nevermind.” Nile said.   
  
Quýnh sighed and looked back out the window again. She kept her gaze steady for a few minutes before stepping over to the beds and taking a seat beside Nile.   
  
“Baku is just... where we start,” she explained simply. Nile resisted the urge to ask what they were starting. She recalled Quýnh questioning her about seeing the others. It was the only other time she’d had this look on her face before. It must have had something to do with them.   
  
“Who are the others?” She asked quietly.   
  
“They’re immortals,” Quýnh answered, keeping her gaze on the wall ahead, “just like us.”  
  
“You’re really serious about that.” Nile said, no small amount of disbelief in her tone.  
  
“Do I need to shoot you again?” Quýnh asked, casting a side eye her way, a small smirk dancing on her lips.  
  
“Please don’t,” Nile answered, completely deadpan. She sighed, taking in those words for another moment. _Immortals_. “It’s a lot to take in. That's all.”  
  
“I know…” Quýnh answered gently. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and ran her hands through her hair.   
  
“Why us?” Nile dared the question.   
  
Quýnh only shrugged, her head lay resting in her hands. Nile frowned at her.  
  
“Seriously?” Quýnh sat up.  
  
“Does it matter why?” She asked. “Or how?”  
  
Nile’s frown remained. She shook her head and cast her eyes to the sky. Quýnh had to have something useful to give her.  
  
“Alright,” she nodded and looked her dead in the eye. “How about what for? What exactly do y’all do with this power?”  
  
Quýnh paused. She pursed her lips together in thought. “We help people.”   
  
Nile raised her eyebrows incredulously. She flipped the stolen passport up in demonstration of just how much she thought of Quýnh's methods for helping people.   
  
“Some of us are better at it than others,” she admitted, taking the passport from Nile and standing again. She walked to the wall and leaned backwards against it, staring at the photo in the passport. Nile could see a small hint of regret in her eyes, but it was fleeting. Quýnh looked up and tossed the booklet back to her. “We’re better when we’re together, anyway.”  
  
“How’d you get separated?” Nile asked curiously.  
  
Quýnh sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. She considered Nile for a moment before speaking. “It’s a long story.”  
  
“According to you we have time for that,” Nile reminded her. Quýnh smiled lightly. Nile returned it.  
  
“We do,” Quýnh nodded. “But not now. Now I need you to tell me what you remember about your dreams.”  
  
“Why?”   
  
“Because it will help us find them.”   
  
“Don’t you dream about them too?” Nile asked, genuinely.   
  
“Not anymore,” Quýnh explained with a shake of her head. “They stop after we meet.”  
  
“How’d-” Nile started, but Quýnh was quick to interject.   
  
“I need you to tell me everything you can remember before it’s gone,” she said quickly, taking a seat beside Nile again. “Starting with the woman.”  
  
Nile nodded, feeling the weightiness and urgency Quýnh conveyed. She looked down at her hands, trying her best to recall everything she could. The images had gone fuzzy, but she remembered a few things.  
  
“She… was with a man,” Nile said. Quýnh's face was expressionless. She kept her eyes steady on Nile.   
  
“With how?” She asked.  
  
“Just… with,” Nile responded. “They were sharing a drink.”   
  
Quýnh blinked and looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes darted back and forth considering this information before she probed on.  
  
“What did he look like?”  
  
Nile sighed and closed her eyes. She should have expected this question, but the image wasn’t entirely clear. She squinted, trying her hardest to remember.   
  
“Uh, kind of... broad.” She said. “Burly. Light hair.”  
  
Quýnh stroked her bottom lip with her thumb, thoughtfully. “Where were they?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Nile answered, overwhelmed.  
  
“Think about what you saw,” Quýnh urged her.   
  
She cast her eyes back an bounced her leg up and down again, trying desperately to remember anything else.   
  
“Uh…” she sighed, “a city. On the water.”  
  
Quýnh looked a little dejected.   
  
“Narrows it down,” she said sardonically.   
  
“There were mountains…”   
  
Quýnh's expression lightened slightly. She looked at Nile with a proud and grateful smile.   
  
“That _does_ narrow it down,” she said. “Anything else?”   
  
Nile shook her head.   
  
“Well, what about the others,” Quýnh probed. She could guess who Andy must have been with, but where were the other two? “They weren’t there?”   
  
“I don’t think so,” Nile said, shaking her head. She was quiet for another moment before she continued. “No, one was in an airport, the other was on a boat.”   
  
Quýnh looked extremely thoughtful at at that information. _Why were they all separated,_ she wondered?   
  
“Alright,” she said nodding, and gave Nile an approving pat on the leg. “It’s not a bad start. Thanks.”  
  
Quýnh stood again and pushed her bag further back on the mattress of the top bunk, pulling a notebook and pen out of it.   
  
“You should get some sleep,” she said. “See what else you can learn in your dreams.”   
  
“Wait…” Nile said.  
  
“If you see anything, write it down,” Quýnh said to her, tossing the notebook and pen to her. “I’m going to take a walk.”   
  
“No!” Nile said as Quýnh reached for the handle of the hatch, which made her stop and turn back to her. Nile brought herself to her feet. “My turn first.”  
  
“What?” Quýnh said with a smirk.   
  
“You told me you needed my help,” Nile said, “but you also said you would help me.”  
  
“I did,” Quýnh nodded, seriously. “Finding these people is how I’m going to help you.” _Trust me_ , she thought to herself. _We’re better when we’re together_ was what she’d said to Nile. There were few things in this world Quýnh was more sure of than that.   
  
“Well then at least give me some answers,” Nile said, staring Quýnh down, desperation written all over her face.   
  
It had been a really long time since Quýnh met a new immortal. She hadn’t been there when the others met Booker. Yusuf and Nicolò had had each other to lean on. The last lonely immortal who’s experience she remembered was… her own. If she hadn’t had Andromache to walk her through this new life...  
  
She sat back down on the mattress and looked up at Nile. She held her hands out briefly in question. An invitation to ask whatever she needed.   
  
“How old are you?” Nile started.   
  
“Four thousand years,” Quýnh answered, “give or take.”   
  
“Jesus.” Nile stared at her for a long moment. She clearly wasn’t expecting that high an answer. Quýnh could guess the implications of it spinning around in her mind. “Are they all as old as you?”  
  
“No…Most are younger.” Quýnh admitted. “One is older.”  
  
Nile had more questions about immortality on her mind. But she found the answer to the first one was more overwhelming than she anticipated. She watched Quýnh closely. Her face had that same worried expression from before. It was clear how much these people must have meant to her.   
  
“What are their names?” Nile asked her, out of an abundance of kindness, and no small amount of genuine curiosity.   
  
Quýnh looked back up at her. She sighed.   
  
“Sebastien. Yusuf. Nicolò.” She paused for a moment. Her eyes glistened slightly, and when she spoke there was a small catch in her voice. “Andromache.”  
  
Nile watched Quýnh quietly. It was the first time since meeting this mysterious woman that she didn’t feel apprehensive. Quýnh was an enigma, calculating, dangerous, sometimes cold, but not without humanity. If Nile didn’t exactly feel safe, at least she felt ....vital. Needed. A part of something bigger than her. Something important. As a marine, that was where she thrived.   
  
“I’m sure we’ll find them,” she heard herself saying, not sure where the confidence was coming from. Quýnh smiled at her.   
  
“We’ll find them,” she said, coming to a stand, and walking back to the door. She put a warm hand to Nile’s shoulder. “You’ll help me find them.”   
  
Nile turned as Quýnh stepped past her.   
  
“For now get some sleep.”  
  
“How’d you get separated?” Nile asked her again while she opened the hatch to the corridor outside. Quýnh stopped and turned to her briefly.  
  
“Another time, Nile,” she said. “Sleep.”


	9. St. John

The sun was shining gloriously on the tops of the houses in the Green Town of Mosfellsbær. Charlie stood in the doorway of the stables, taking a break from her evening tasks to take it all in. It had been a perfect day from beginning to end  
  
She’d arrived back at the farm with enough spare time to enjoy a brief ride up the hill with her favorite girl, Perta, a gray, spotted six-year-old pony with as much an affinity for morning excursions as Charlie had. After breakfast feeding, she worked her way through eight of the sixteen animals and gave them a thorough rubdown and grooming for the day (the other half would receive the same attention tomorrow). In the late morning she ran a tour for a young family of five up the Reittour-Laxnes trail. The horses had all been given their evening meal, and now that she was nearly finished cleaning out the stables, she’d considered it would be a good evening to relax by the fire.   
  
It had been a good night too. Charlie smiled to herself. Yes, from start to finish, it had really been just a beautiful day, very much including waking up beside her oldest friend. The oldest friend that she knew of anyway.   
  
Charlie let out a long slow breath. _Friend._ There was no finer word she could think to describe him. She didn’t have many, and to come to call someone her friend, well it really was the highest praise she could give. But, Jesus, their relationship was so much more complicated than that.   
  
At first they were just patients together. A John and Jane Doe lying in two separate beds in two separate rooms down the hall from each other in a St. John hospital. They’d both been recovered from the water by fishermen, miraculously unharmed, but inexplicably unable to recall anything from their lives before. Two patients with the diagnosis of dissociative amnesia. It was unheard of. After a week in rehabilitation, with neurologists, psychiatrists, and neuropsychologists all failing to determine a cause, nor a cure, a nurse suggested letting them meet. The idea was that perhaps if it were possible they knew each other, meeting might spark something in them. It didn’t.   
  
But that first meeting had been quite something.  
  
Charlie had been quiet. She’d always stayed quiet with the doctors around, never having much confidence in them. She wasn’t entirely sure why. She didn’t get the sense that she was afraid of them. She didn’t fear the treatments or the procedures. She didn’t distrust their good intentions or even worry about possible incompetence. She just felt above them somehow. There was no reason she knew of to feel this way, but she did. And there was a power in that. So to avoid saying anything dismissive or insulting, she said very little at all.   
  
And she sat in that treatment room with the psychotherapist and John, listening to him dodge, parry, and occasionally answer the doctor’s questions with his own sarcastic rejoiners. She got the sense that he felt the same power. Only his was more than distrust. It was disdain.   
  
“Why do you think you are so afraid to meet the man you used to be?” The doctor had finally snapped enough to ask him.  
  
“Well, you’re the expert at jogging memories, Doc,” he’d replied. “We’ve been at this for days and I’ve still got nothing. Clearly you’re not trying too hard, so the question is…”  
  
He leaned forward for dramatic effect.  
  
“Why are you so afraid to meet the man I used to be?”   
  
Charlie felt her lips quirking. It was the first time it had happened in her memory. John had been the maker of her very first smile.   
  
He always made her smile, she thought to herself as she locked up the stable for the night. He was one of the few people in the world who never failed to do so. They shared a similar sense of humor. Not… cruel. No, John didn’t really make a habit of being as contemptuous as he’d been in those early days in the hospital. In fact, most of the time he was incredibly kind, and gentle. St. John, she’d sometimes jokingly called him. But there was a darkness in him that she seemed to understand. Despite their resistance to the treatments attempted on them, years later they would both come to realize how the obscurity of their pasts left a kind of emptiness inside of them. And whenever it crept up on them, John always knew the perfect thing to say to make her smile again.   
  
_Kindred spirits_ , Charlie thought, as she gathered some kindling. That’s what they were. It was clear from the very first time they actually spoke to each other.   
  
She was standing in the grocery store, staring absently at a stack of vegetables on a cart when a voice pulled her out.  
  
“You cooking aubergine tonight?”   
  
She looked up and the wisecracking man from the hospital was standing next to her, holding a grocery basket in his hands. They’d both been discharged that same day and given some grocery vouchers from a social worker, who’d also set them up in temporary housing nearby.   
  
“Aubergine?” She questioned him.  
  
“Eggplant…” he pointed to the dark purple vegetable in front of her. “It’s Aubergine in France and the UK, but I think they call it eggplant here.”  
  
He furrowed his brows slightly, as if he were amazed to be spouting this knowledge. She gave him a sympathetic smile. She had her own little factoids swirling around her own mind as well. The word aubergine wasn’t one of them.   
  
“I guess we don’t come from the same place after all,” he suggested.   
  
She considered that. Eggplant honestly didn’t mean much to her either.   
  
“I don’t think I cook,” she admitted, cracking a self-deprecating smirk.   
  
“Yeah…” was all he said.  
  
She looked back at the vegetables in front of her and stared at them for another few seconds. She shook her head.   
  
“The biggest clue I’ve had yet about my past is that I really wish these were liquor vouchers so I could get a handle of vodka.”  
  
He chuckled at this, a soothing hum of deep murmurs under his breath.   
  
“Bourbon for me,” he confessed. He reached out and took a couple zucchinis, placing them in his basket. He started walking along the aisles of the store, and she beside him.   
  
“They set you up with a job?” She asked him, conversationally.   
  
“Yeah,” he answered. “Construction. You?”  
  
“Waiting tables.”  
  
“I don’t know you well… or at all,” he laughed, “but, considering you don’t think you cook, I get the strong sense you wouldn’t be very good at that.”   
  
“Well, it turns out I don’t have many skills.” She’d sat down with the social worker going through options for temp jobs. Most of them required some understanding of computers. Everything about computers meant less to her than the word aubergine.   
  
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he answered kindly, before adding. “Anyway good luck with that, because serving people is one of the hardest skills there is.”   
  
Boy was that ever true. It turned out she had a lot of skills but waiting tables was certainly not one of them. And as she’d predicted, cooking was not one of them either. It was a good thing he’d suggested trying it out together that first night. It became the beginning of a routine they fell into very swiftly. There was an easy complacency between them, and before long they were like family.   
  
And he was right. There were so many things she discovered she was good at. She had an overwhelming vault of knowledge in her mind, mostly about history and warfare, but there were other things. They’d been watching a movie together, an old spaghetti western, and she complained about the sound effect of the horses whinnying.   
  
“Isn’t that the sound they make?” He’d asked her.   
  
“Yeah, but they don’t do it nearly that much,” she argued, completely annoyed. She didn’t expound on how she knew this, but he certainly thought there might be something to it, so he surprised her with a visit to a horse ranch a few days later. It was there that she discovered her talent with the animals. Not just a talent. A passion. She started riding for fun on the weekends, and before long, she was taking side jobs to help out in the stables.   
  
That was the kind of man John was. That was what he’d always been for her. He made her feel like herself. And he helped her _discover_ herself. That was why it was so easy to think they belonged together that way. That was why she convinced herself for so long that whatever yearning she was feeling, whenever that emptiness crept back into her soul, he could drive it out.  
  
Sometimes it was massive. Like the utter loneliness that first drove her into his bed. The sex had been good. Not just good. Exemplary. And she convinced herself for a long time that the yearning she felt was gone.   
  
And sometimes it was trivial. Like when he’d first given her the name she settled on.   
  
He’d been skimming through a newspaper for ideas, considering options for what he’d decide his new legal name would be.   
  
“Richard?” he suggested, as she drove home from their lunch together. She pulled a face.   
  
“No.”   
  
He turned the paper over.   
  
“Daniel.”  
  
“Aren’t you French?” She asked him. He still wasn’t sure about that. He spoke fluent French, but then again so did she, they’d discovered. He certainly seemed to have some kind of French leaning accent, but that didn’t mean French necessarily.   
  
“Henry?” He asked, turning to her, placating her suggestion that he needed a French name.   
  
“I only see you as a John,” she argued. That was what they called him in the hospital. That was what she’d called him for weeks. It fit him well enough.   
  
“Well… I don’t see you as a Jane,” he replied, turning back to the newspaper.   
  
“What do you see me as?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He considered her seriously for a few seconds. “Charlotte? Charline? Something like that.”  
  
“Charline?” She pulled another face.   
  
“Charlie,” he suggested.   
  
She kept her eyes on the road for a few minutes, but let the name roll through her mind.   
  
“Charlie...” She considered it, as she parked the car near their building. He smiled.   
  
“Charlie, huh?” She asked, turning to him. “I can deal with that. I’m still calling you John though.”   
  
“I can deal with that.” He smiled.  
  
John was comfort. John was home. In ten years, she never met anyone else who made her feel that way. They just clicked from the very beginning. Their downfall was in misinterpreting what that click really meant. It was love, no doubt about it, and it was true. But there was something missing in it. It wasn’t heart-wrenching, soul-igniting, can’t-stop-thinking-about-you, can’t-go-on-without-you love. But neither of them was so naive as to think that meant it wasn’t worth having. And that was fine. For a while.   
  
Until their souls called out for more.   
  
John couldn’t ever shake the feeling that he had a family out there. She’d tried to be that for him, but she knew she couldn’t give him what he wanted. That first time he left, she knew he’d have stayed if she’d asked him to. _St. John._ But the fact that she knew she wouldn’t go with him if _he_ asked, was all the reason she had not to.   
  
“You’re not curious who you are?” He asked her for the umpteenth time, sitting side by side in the car she’d driven to drop him at the airport. Charlie sighed.   
  
“There’s obviously no one out there looking for whoever I was,” she explained. “Why would I want to know more about that person?”  
  
“I’d want to find you…” he said, not without love. They leaned in and embraced for as long as they could, until the airport security car honked his horn at her for idling too long. She wished him luck, and he the same to her, and they separated for the first time after three years together.   
  
And so began the repeated cycle of their lives. Whatever undefined thing flickered between them would pull them together for a time. And then they would realize it wasn’t right. They would agree their love was more platonic than anything, and they would go their separate ways, trying to find their place in the world. Trying to find themselves. And when they were unsuccessful, their loneliness, their mutual feeling that they didn’t belong anywhere, except when they were together, would pull them right back.   
  
That was until now.   
  
Now… after her dream, Charlie had the first real tangible feeling that there truly was something bigger out there for her. Something important. Something that seemed to be igniting her soul. And as she sat by the fire, staring into the mesmerizing flames, she felt sure for the first time in a very long time. And it all had to do with this mysterious girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. was. A. Struggle. 
> 
> I love Andy so much. But I don't write her often, because I find it difficult to get in her head. I don't necessarily struggle to think about what she might DO... 
> 
> For example, for me it was easy to imagine that a modern day woman with her personality (but who wasn't responsible for a family of immortals and, you know, the fate of humanity) might fall into a friends-with-benefits type relationship with someone she has the type of close bond she clearly has with Booker. 
> 
> But getting in her head about it. That was hard. I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't quite get there in most peoples' opinions. And I definitely wouldn't be surprised if most of you detest the idea of a sexual relationship between Andy and Booker. I don't love it. I just thought it was plausible. 
> 
> (Don't worry, I know this is in the tags, but I hope it comes off clearly that this is ultimately an Andromaquynh centered story, with some Kaysanova, and hints at Book of Nile). 
> 
> And I really did put a LOT of thought and effort into this chapter, so bear that in mind. 
> 
> As I mentioned in the previous Iceland chapter, I completely forgot about how Iceland has 24 hour daylight in the summer, so I've come back and fixed this. It was quite a doh! moment. I really really do put thought into what I write but sometimes I completely forget about some things (and my typos can be pretty ridiculous). I should probably find a beta. 
> 
> If perhaps you ARE enjoying (not just this, but) any part of this story, I'd love it if you would leave a comment. They are good fuel to keep the story going. I hate to beg for it, but at the risk of seeming desperate, I am in fact desperate. Thanks for the kudos too, readers!


	10. Photograph

Mario was pleased to find the handsome bearded man was back in the activity center the following day. He’d said he would be there, but things can change in businesses all the time. Shifts can get switched. People call out sick. Weather can cancel dive excursions. 

But when he stepped through the door, he was greeted by Nicky’s otherworldly grin, and a wave of relief washed over him. There was a little more than relief going on, but Mario tried to ignore the butterflies swarming inside him to focus on the task in front of him. 

This was the man. This was the man in the magazine ad who’d brought him all the way out here. This was the man who might be able to give him a clue, any clue, about his life before the water. It was a long shot, but well worth the trip, he felt. 

And now even more so because of otherworldly smiles. 

“Buenos dias,” Nicky said, looking up at Mario, flashing dimples and pearly whites. _Calm down, farfalle,_ Mario thought to himself. 

“Buenos dias,” he echoed, pulling his new sunglasses down off his face and folding them in his hands as he stepped up to the desk.

“Beautiful day for a dive, wouldn’t you say?” Nicky offered, conversationally. 

“I am certainly hoping so.” Mario raised his eyebrows in question, to which Nicky nodded assuringly. 

“You couldn’t ask for better conditions,” he declared. “Do you have your certification?”

“Yes.” Mario lifted his shirt slightly to reveal a waterproof fanny pack strapped to his right hip. Nicky darted his eyes to the windows behind him, but then chanced a quick glance at the patches of light hair on his tummy. Mario unzipped the pack to pull out a laminated card, and handed it to Nicky. 

“Wow,” Nicky said, reading the card. He lifted his eyes to Mario who was smoothing his shirt back down over the pack. “Red Sea Diving College. Do you know what’s funny? That’s where I got certified as well.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Nicky leaned forward on the counter to transfer some info onto a form. Mario stood still and quiet, observing the gentle strokes of his wrist as he wrote. “If you could just sign here, please.”  
  
Nicky slid the form across the desk with a pen, and Mario obliged in leaving his mark. He shifted the form back as Nicky held out his diving certification card. Mario held out the pen and they attempted a simultaneous exchange of the objects, making momentary contact of their hands in a slightly clumsy manner. Mario smiled, while Nicky chuckled. 

Much more sensibly, Nicky shifted the card in his hand so that his thumb and forefinger were free to take the pen from Mario, returned it to the cup it lived in and then held the card out again. Mario took it gratefully.

“Thank you,” he said, slipping it back into the pack on his hips. Nicky missed the show this time, as he was stealing a moment to jam his eyes shut in chagrin at that awkward exchange. 

“We leave in about thirty minutes,” he said, quickly recovering, as Mario looked back up at him. “You’ll want to be on the dock then.”

“Looking forward to it,” the man replied with a twinkle in his eye. 

Mario was sure to be ready on the dock less than twenty minutes later. Nicky had been right, the weather was absolutely perfect for a day out on the water. The sun beamed down on them with a blanket of warmth and light that was neither sweltering nor blinding, with welcome breaks of cool provided by the cumulus puffs of white in the sky. The water was mostly calm and clear, laying out ahead an endless expanse of aquamarine and patches of royal blue. 

He was one of four resort guests to take the trip out that day, the other three were in a group. He stayed back out of the way for most of the ride, sitting safely in the middle of the boat, where he liked to be, enjoying the sunshine and salty air. Once in a while, the boat would hit an unexpected wave in the water that would startle him, and send him reaching for the pulpit. But for the most part, it was a smooth ride. He watched the enchanting bearded man called Nicky (and sometimes “Joe” he recalled with a smirk) captain the boat with grace and poise, while making friendly conversation with the guests. He had a lot to say about the island, the atoll, and the Blue Hole itself, a large underwater sinkhole which has existed for more than fourteen thousand years. Among its depths, he explained, divers would find many fascinating species of fish, sharks, and beautiful ancient stalactite formations. 

Mario was quiet while the others asked him probing questions. He was happy simply to enjoy listening to the man speak, and watching the animated way he explained things with a poetic cadence to his speech, and a familiar propensity for speaking with his hands. It was not quite as pronounced as the people back home… _nor me_ , he admitted to himself, but it was there, and it made Mario smile. 

The dive itself was one of Mario’s favorites he’d ever experienced. The water was impossibly blue. The reef sharks, though intimidating, seemed to be swayed by the tranquility of the site, and kept very much to themselves. There were corals in a broad spectrum of color. Mario even got up close and personal, very much unexpectedly, with a sea turtle. He didn’t spend as much time submerged as everyone else, which Nicky took note of. 

As he climbed back into the boat, he weighed that the experience was second only perhaps to Yolanda Reef in Egypt, which had been Mario’s first SCUBA dive three years earlier. It was where he’d gotten certified. It was where Nicky had been certified too, apparently. He wondered to himself, as the other divers returned to the boat as well and Nicky initiated their trip back to the island, when Nicky had been there, and how close their paths might have been at one point. 

Nicky’s eyes met his briefly, and Mario gave him a friendly smile before looking away. He’d been staring, he realized. He busied himself doffing the wet suit, drying off his body, and reapplying sunscreen. He kept his eyes on nothing in particular as he reached an arm over his shoulder to slather the lotion on his back.

“Need a hand?”

Nicky was looking expectantly at him from behind the boat’s wheel. 

Mario paused, but ultimately decided to take him up on the offer.

"Yes, thank you.” He rose from his seat with his sunscreen and a t-shirt and stepped closer to the wheel and to Nicky.

“Not a problem,” the captain said, taking the sunscreen bottle from him, as Mario turned his back to him. “This is actually part of my job description.”

Mario couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the grin in his tone. 

Behind him, Nicky took his time to ensure he didn’t leave any fair skin unprotected, though it appeared visibly more sun-kissed today from when they’d first met. He took a moment to marvel at the pattern of his freckles and moles, and how they reminded him of the constellation Aquila. He was struck with a passing wave of _dejavu_ that froze him on the spot.

“All finished?” Mario asked, noting the pause. 

Nicky made a few more quick circles on his left side. 

“Yes.” He held out the bottle to Mario who was now facing him again. 

“Grazie mille.”

“Prego.”

Mario raised his eyebrows in amusement and nodded. Nicky grinned sheepishly, pleased to have impressed the man, and a little surprised to have learned he knew that word. 

He shifted his attention back to the compass and turned the wheel a little. For the first time, Mario took note of the chain around his neck, and the intriguing charm that hung from it. He stole a few more seconds to examine its markings, geometric in form, worn down, and probably very old, before pulling his t-shirt on over his head. 

He hadn’t realized they were crossing the wake of another boat, and was surprised by a sudden jerk, sending him reaching for the guardrail again. Nicky gave him an assuring smile. 

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so…” he said to him with one eye on the water ahead, “you don’t seem to like boats much.” 

“I have a complicated relationship with the open water, yes,” Mario admitted. 

“You pick an interesting hobby for someone who’s afraid of the water,” Nicky suggested.

Mario quirked a small smile. 

“I don’t mind the dives,” he explained. “Down there… the world is quiet. The suit surrounds me, and I’m in control. I’m down there because I choose to be.”

Even so he never really chooses to be down there very long. He didn’t have many memories of his time stranded in the water. But the feeling was often there when he swam, and it was always there whenever he stepped onto a boat. What made him uneasy more than anything was the idea of being suddenly propelled into the great expanse of the ocean with no lifeline. Again. 

Nicky nodded in understanding. 

“Believe it or not, I used to be afraid of it too,” he confessed.

“Really?”

He nodded again. 

“It’s why I come out here so much,” he responded. “To confront that fear. Any one of a million things can go wrong, but if I keep my head I know I’ll be alright.” 

Mario’s smile widened a near imperceptible amount. It was like Nicky had read the words right from his mind. It was all feeling incredibly strange, he reflected. When he got on that plane days earlier, he honestly felt a little crazy for what he was doing. Travelling across the world to speak with someone because they resembled someone else in a fuzzy old photograph. But Mario had had that strange feeling that, crazy as it may seem, this was the path he needed to take. There was no possible way Nicky was the man in the photo. It was decades old. But the fraction of chance that he might know who the man was, that was what had gotten him on that plane. 

But now… 

Now after meeting the man there were all these vague feelings. There were all these strange coincidences. Now he felt crazy for a whole new set of reasons. 

The sun was sinking toward the trees when they arrived back at the resort. Mario stayed in his seat to allow the other guests to disembark first. When he stepped onto the dock with his bag and his gear, Nicky was standing there, ready with his friendly resort staff smile. 

“I hope you had a good time.”

“I did,” Mario replied sincerely. “Thank you again.” 

“It was my pleasure,” Nicky said, flashing his dimples again, “but I can’t take much credit. You picked one of the most beautiful diving spots in the world.”

“It was quite spectacular,” Mario agreed, “but… I must admit the dive was not what brought me here.” 

Nicky quirked his lips in curious amusement, not quite sure what to make of that. 

“No?”

Mario paused in mild trepidation. Now was as good a time as any. 

“I came to Belize because... I wanted to meet you.”

Nicky kept his expression still and calm. The alarms in his mind sounded, but almost imperceptibly quiet, as if miles away.

“Me?” He asked. 

Mario nodded and pulled open his bag. Nicky watched him as he searched through the pocket for something. He pulled out a magazine and handed it to Nicky, cover down. The back displayed an advertisement for Matachica Resort. Nicky could see Sheila standing proudly behind the bar in one of the side pictures. Underneath it Raya was grinning as she served a drink to a guest on the beach. Underneath that, Nicky waved from the bow of the boat they’d just disembarked.

“This is you, yes?” Mario pointed to the third picture. Nicky sighed. He had no idea that photo had been used in an advertisement. He’d have to have a talk with Sheila about that later. But for now, he brought his eyes back up to Mario who was looking very serious, and slightly self-conscious.

“This ad is what brought me to Belize,” he confessed. 

The alarms should have been getting louder, but for some reason, Nicky managed to keep his unease at bay. He couldn’t explain why, but it was difficult to be suspicious of the man in front of him. 

“You came all the way to Belize because you saw my picture in an ad?” He forced a charming smirk to lighten the mood a little. “Am I that alluring?”

“Sì...” Mario said quietly, not quite meeting Nicky’s eyes. “But... that wasn’t it.”

“Okay...” Nicky said, his smirk fading slightly. “I’m confused.”

“I can imagine,” Mario responded though a sigh, rubbing his forehead as though it pained him. He reached back into his bag and pulled out another piece of paper. This time a photograph. He handed it also to Nicky who took it gently, laying it on top of the magazine. It was old, and faded. Clearly older than either of them could be. But curiously, the subject of the photo displayed two men, two soldiers, who bore undeniable resemblances to the two of them. Now came the crescendo of alarms. 

“What’s this?” 

“A photograph.”

“Looks old.” 

“Yes.” Mario hesitated again. “Do you… know this man?” 

There it was. The kind of question that Nicky had feared for years. Not simply a question about his past. People were always innocently curious about that. But this was a specific question about his acquaintances. It was likely to lead to questions about old lifestyles, about old skills, about old sins. Nicky didn’t have any answers to give, but the idea that someone could get this legitimately close to a question that might _ought_ to have an answer… it shook him to his core. 

The thing is, if he were being honest with himself, he’d admit that his core had been shaking all day. Longer, in fact. Ever since the Italian man had first stepped through the door, there’d been a commotion inside him. Like bits of him were waking up that had long been asleep. And he mostly couldn’t help but think this wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but then he looked at Mario again. The earnestness beaming from his searching eyes kept Nicky’s feet from running for the hill.

“Sorry…” he said, realizing he’d been silent for an uncomfortably long and anxious time. “I um…”

He had no idea what to say was the truth.

“I have to helm the boat back to the marina and get it cleaned up.” He handed the magazine and photo back to Mario. The man looked disappointed, but understanding all the same, embarrassment clear on his face as he slid the papers back into his bag.

“Of course,” he said. He shifted the strap a little higher on his shoulder before turning to the beach to return to his bungalow. 

“Do you think we could talk about this later?” Nicky called to him. He turned. “Perhaps… over dinner?”

Mario blinked in surprise, but moments later the slightest smile of relief tugged at his lips”

“Sure.”

Nicky suggested a meeting time and place (a dive bar that boasted the best tacos on the island), before stepping back onto the boat to dock it for the night. 

He was entering dangerous territory, he feared. But the pull and curiosity he felt for this man was too strong not to heed. At least for one innocent dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liked the idea of the possibility that after all those years together, Joe might have picked up the habit of talking with his hands from Nicky. And I felt like it was so poignant to have Nicky recognizing that habit in him, without even realizing he's the reason he does it. 
> 
> Thanks for stopping by this fic. If you're enjoying it, I'd be so very grateful for a comment. They are extremely motivating and just make my heart soar,, doesn't matter if its as short as an emoji or as incomprehensible as a keysmash (in fact, those are sometimes my favorites). It's just so nice to know the story is appreciated. Much love to you, readers!


	11. Where is Andromache?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to leave a comment or a kudos. It's always so nice to hear how people are feeling about the story, and serves as great motivation to keep going. I don't often have the mental energy to write on weeknights, after a long day at work, but I couldn't stop thinking about this particular chapter, and it nagged at me over the last four nights until I had it done. I'm shocked at how long it ended up being and sincerely hope you enjoy it!

**2008**

_It burned. The sensation of whatever filled her chest was so unfamiliar, so unexpected,_ _Quỳnh_ _couldn’t attribute the feeling to anything but fire. She was absolutely certain she was breathing in fire. But as she gasped and cried out, she was quickly consumed with fact that she was breathing. Period._

_It wasn’t fire. It was just air. Glorious, warm, sweet air that spilled into her lungs, so foreign to her senses after eons in the water, her mind only registered pain._

_"Where is Andromache?" The question, though she was unable to speak it just yet, burned inside her as well. The only sound she was able to make was a weakened, yet primal cry._

_“Holy shit… There’s someone in there, skipper.”_

_Human voices made frantic, vaguely familiar sounds above her. The world around her shook. Bang. Bang. Bang. And then a blinding light._

**2020**

Quỳnh pressed the top of the lighter open with a flick of her thumb and watched the flame dance in her hands for a few moments. She lifted the lighter to the cigarette in her mouth and let the thick cloud of unfiltered chemicals warm her lungs. Ever since she felt that first gust of clean oxygen spill into her body, it all felt too clean. Too light. She needed the weight of something more pernicious to ground her, or she feared she would float away. 

Across the city to the southeast, she could see the Flame Towers poking up over the skyline, waving at her. She waved back with a gentle salute of her smoking hand. It seemed appropriate. Directly beneath her chin, resting on the edge of the balcony lay the contraption she’d just finished piecing back together. 

Incredible, she remarked to herself. A world of knowledge tucked inside one tiny machine. It was a miracle of technology that she appreciated more than most ever could. But she also knew how dangerous it could be. The device powered back up in her hand as she stepped back inside the room. She took a seat at the desk against the wall, flipping through the photo albums. "Fam." "SEMPER FIerce." "Grin and Juice."

That one was enjoyable. It was an interesting amalgam of beautiful landscapes across the world, cute and unexpected pairs of animals (like a baby duck and chimpanzee), LOTS of puppies, and various people making weird faces, sometimes the same picture over and over with different captions. She chuckled a little under her breath at one particular picture of a disgruntled looking cat, over which read the caption, “What doesn’t kill you will hopefully try again.” 

Behind her, Nile started to stir beneath the covers of her bed. The younger woman did this a lot, she’d gathered over just a couple days. She was one of those dynamic sleepers. Twisting, turning, frequently shifting positions. That was how Andromache had been when they’d first met as well. In those early days, when they used to sleep pressed up against each other for the warmth (before they simply slept that way because they wanted to), Quỳnh had lost many hours of proper rest because of Andromache’s constant activity. It was a habit she worked hard to change, and did so quickly when it had first pushed her sleeping partner away. 

Quỳnh didn’t turn. If Nile was simply tossing in her dreams, she was inclined to let the girl sleep. If she was waking, well, Quỳnh was sure she would speak up. 

And she did. 

“What time is it?” Nile asked, looking at Quỳnh through bleary eyes, sitting herself up in the bed. 

“Thirteen hundred hours,” Quỳnh responded, smoke flowing out with each word. 

“Shit.” Nile rubbed her neck. They’d checked into the hotel around 2:00am. Nile had trouble sleeping on the boat, so she passed out quickly after collapsing into the steady and still bed. She couldn’t recall that last time she’d slept eleven hours straight, if it had ever happened before. She was overcome with a yawn that she stifled slightly because of the cigarette smell filling up the room and encroaching her taste buds.

“Do you mind not doing that inside?” She asked, turning to the side of the bed and resting her feet on the carpet. On the bedside table she could see two plane tickets to Geneva. 

“You worried the second-hand smoke will kill you?” Quỳnh asked before taking another long drag. She remained facing the desk.

“No, it’s just disgusting.” 

Quỳnh swiveled in the chair slightly and cast a side-eye at her. The room was dimly lit, but Nile could clearly see an impish smirk tugging at her lips. Quỳnh turned back to the desk and extinguished the cigarette in an ashtray. 

“What are you doing?” Nile asked, coming to a stand. 

“Looking through your pictures,” Quỳnh answered nonchalantly. 

“What?”

Quỳnh turned completely in the chair this time, and held the smartphone up in display. The screen showed a picture of Nile with her arm around another girl her age, their cheeks pressed against each other, smiling out from ear to ear. 

“She’s cute,” Quỳnh said. “This your girlfriend?”

“My cousin.” Nile made a quick dash for the phone, but Quỳnh was quicker, pulling her hand away and holding the phone back in the air behind her. 

“Is she single?” Nile glared at her. “Kidding. Here.”

Quỳnh held the phone out and Nile took it back from her. She sat back down on the foot of the bed and started flipping through it. 

“You won’t be able to make any calls,” Quỳnh warned her. “I disabled the network antenna and GPS.”

Nile looked up at her in exasperation.

“For safety,” Quỳnh explained insistently. “So you can’t hook up to the web, but… you can listen to all your songs and shit.” 

Nile shifted her attention to her phone again. Quỳnh had downloaded all her playlists and pictures, but the 4G display and bars had completely disappeared. 

“So it’s basically an iPod now,” Nile summarized. 

“A what?” Quỳnh’s expression was completely humorless, otherwise Nile would have thought she was kidding. It’s true, an iPod was kind of archaic at this point, but it seemed strange to her that someone who could dismantle a smartphone didn’t know what an ipod was. She supposed when you were four thousand years old, you probably only paid attention to the most useful new technology. 

Nile took a few minutes to look through her family photos. There was her dad in his military uniform. Her mom and brother smiling happily in the kitchen. She felt so grateful to be able to see their faces again, having assumed these pictures, these memories, had been destroyed in the plane wreck with her phone. She was troubled to realize for the first time now that she’d taken for granted that she could replace them in the future with new pictures, new memories. 

“Is something wrong?”

Nile made no attempt to hide her frown. She kept her eyes cast down at the phone. 

“I’m never going to see my mom again, am I?” She asked with quiet resignation. 

Quỳnh watched her, still and thoughtful. She didn’t speak for a few moments. She thought about her own mother, whom she would most certainly never see again. That fate would be Nile’s eventually too. Sooner or later. Quỳnh stood and walked to the open door that led to the balcony. She lit another cigarette and let it fill her lungs. For Quỳnh and her family, goodbye had been abrupt and traumatic. All her goodbye’s had been abrupt and traumatic. She thought maybe when you live as long as she did, there was no other option. But maybe there was. 

“You could…” Quỳnh suggested after a long moment of quiet, breathing the cigarette smoke out into the city. Nile looked up at her in surprise. 

“You’d let me?”

Quỳnh blinked and shook her head. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned abruptly to the younger woman. 

“You’re not my prisoner, Nile. You can do whatever you want,” she insisted. 

“Really?” Nile replied, in almost a challenging tone. 

“Really,” Quỳnh said seriously. She moved her arm as if to take another drag, but stopped herself. She tossed the cigarette onto the balcony and closed the door. Nile’s hard expression softened as Quỳnh took a seat beside her on the bed. “I can think of several reasons why you shouldn’t. But… if you want to walk out that door and go back to wherever you come from, pretend you’re a normal person for the next ten to fifteen years…”

Nile stared at her. Her face, in a matter of moments, had shifted from vexed, to nonplussed, to dejected. 

“Because that’s all you have before the questions start,” Quỳnh explained. “Before the suspicious stares come your way. Before the fear. And the resentment.”

Nile considered Quỳnh’s words for a suspended moment, before shaking her head.

“My mom wouldn’t be like that,” she told Quỳnh firmly. “She loves me. No matter what.”

Quỳnh nodded and shrugged her eyebrows. Maybe she did. What did she know about mothers in these times? _Her_ mother certainly hadn’t loved her unconditionally, it turned out. _Her_ mother had had the same suspicions the church did thousands of years later. When she noticed otherworldly powers in her daughter, she’d feared it as devilry and tried her best to snuff it out. Only once though. That was enough to send Quỳnh off on her way. 

But maybe Nile’s mother could accept her for what she was. She looked up at the girl, half expecting her to gather her things and walk out the door right then and there. As if reading her mind, Nile looked over at the door, and then down at her hands for a few seconds before responding.

“Well, it’s not like I have any money, or a passport.” She held up the dismantled device in her hand. “Or a phone.”

Quỳnh smirked lightly.

"You do have a passport," she reminded Nile.  
  
"Not mine though," Nile argued back.  
  
Quỳnh considered Nile's words. She really had left Nile with no other options than to follow her, whether blindly or with eyes wide open. There wasn’t an alternative. Well, besides experimentation by the U.S. government. Quỳnh knew first hand how treacherous that path would be. But she certainly didn’t want Nile to feel like a prisoner, stuck with her. She _should_ have a choice. 

“When this is all over…” Quỳnh said, looking her firmly in the eyes. “ I’ll get you home if that’s what you really want.” 

“You will?” 

She nodded. 

“On my honor.” Her voice sounded different to Nile when she spoke those words. It was the first time Nile could really see traces of the truth...that Quỳnh _had_ come from another time. “If you help me get back to my family, I’ll help you get back to yours. Deal?”

“Yeah,” Nile said. She nodded slowly. “Deal.”

The two women held each other’s gaze for a moment in time, before Quỳnh stood again and began to calmly gather some of their things around the room into a large duffle. Nile stood too and cast her eyes back to the plane tickets on the bed. 

“So... Geneva.” She started aimlessly wandering around the room. She didn’t have much to gather, so she tidied up instead. 

Quỳnh nodded. 

“I think that might be the city you described. Water, mountains.” She plopped down on the side of the bed and shoved a sweater forcefully into nearly full bag. When she spoke again it was in a wistful tone. “Andromache always loved the Alps.” 

Nile watched her with big eyes. Quỳnh stared down toward her lap, seemingly looking at nothing in particular, likely reliving some memory from long ago.

“Did you see anything new that might be helpful?” She asked, coming back to the present.

“Um… helpful?”

“Anything,” Quỳnh urged gently. 

Nile leaned against the wall next to the door that led to the balcony. She thought back to what she’d seen in her dreams. There'd been quite a few dreams over the course of those eleven hours, but they slipped away quickly if she didn’t think about them. _Come back,_ she willed those images. 

“Well,” she stalled for a bit more time before something finally came to her. “The dark haired one with the beard…”

“Yusuf…” Quỳnh said informatively. 

“Right.” Nile nodded. “He was SCUBA diving with the one with the earrings and the mole on his cheek. Looked like maybe the Caribbean, so _they’re_ definitely not in Switzerland.”

Quỳnh smiled a little bit. _Nicolò with earrings? How precious._ She considered to herself that at least he and Yusuf were together again. 

“Andromache?” She asked. 

“She’s the woman?” Nile clarified. Quỳnh nodded to her. “She was... riding a horse.” 

“Alone?”

“I don’t think so,” Nile answered. “There was a family. It was like she was a tour guide or something.”

Quỳnh squinted. The horse made sense. Andromache had always had a unique ability to beseech the creatures to her will without having to break them in the old, cruel ways. Or rather the new, cruel ways as far as they were concerned. But what possible mission could have had her posing as a tour guide? On the other hand what kind of mission would require SCUBA diving? 

“The other guy was on a computer,” Nile continued unprompted. “He was having lunch by the water. Still in that same city. That’s Sebastian, right?”

Quỳnh nodded. “They call him Booker.”

“Why?” Nile asked. She’d seen him a couple times the night before too. He was always fiddling around on the computer. “Tech” seemed like a better nickname to her. 

“I don’t actually know,” Quỳnh stood, zipping up the duffle and tossing it onto the bed. “I didn’t know him very well. He came along after…”

“After what?” Nile watched Quỳnh as she walked to the doors and pushed them out to the balcony. She stood still and quiet, staring out into the city.

“After we were separated the last time,” Quỳnh finally said. “He’s how I was able to find them. Again.”

“The last time…?”

“Yeah.” Quỳnh reflexively pulled out a cigarette and lit it in her mouth. Nile kept her objections to herself this time. She waited a few minutes for Quỳnh to elaborate on this. She didn’t.

“Quỳnh.” Nile stepped out onto the balcony and placed herself right in Quỳnh’s eyeline. “If you can’t trust me, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to help you.”

Quỳnh took the cigarette out of her mouth. The look on her face was difficult to interpret.

“It’s not about trusting you,” she insisted. “I don’t want to… frighten you.”

“I’m not a child,” Nile said with a shrug of her shoulders. She couldn’t help but feel like that was a completely ridiculous thing to say to someone as old as Quỳnh was. Of course she would seem like a child in Quỳnh’s eyes. Nile was surprised by Quỳnh’s next words though.

“I know.” She said quietly. She turned slowly and walked back into the room, lit cigarette still in hand. Nile let her have that one. 

“We were captured,” she began, taking a seat back on the bed. Nile remained standing in the doorway. “Andromache and me. They were rounding up and hanging women whose only crime was being unmarried, homely, old crones. God help you if you had a cat too. We tried to help. We even saved a few, but we drew suspicions onto ourselves. It’s hard to argue you’re not a witch when you defy death over and over.”

Nile swallowed hard. For the first time since she’d met Quỳnh, Nile felt the fear in what she was. 

“The plan was to let the fire burn us as long as it took,” Quỳnh continued. Her eyes had gone off somewhere else again. To some other time. “That maybe eventually they’d be convinced we were gone for good and just walk away. We’d run and… meet up with our brothers and never return to England again.”

The black of Quỳnh’s eyes grew in size, as a shadow passed over her.

“Little did we know, the clergy had discovered a much more efficient way to keep us down. I’ve learned since returning to the world… it’s called an Iron Maiden.”

Nile looked absolutely horrified. That was the right response, Quỳnh thought. 

For hundreds of years Quỳnh endured the torment of drowning over and over again. But what had made it even worse was the idea that somewhere out there, Andromache was suffering the same fate. That was until she started dreaming of Booker. 

“How long?” Nile asked, a break in her voice Quỳnh regretted causing. If she’d asked how long it felt, Quỳnh would have said thousands of years.  
  
“It was 1502 when I went in the box.” Quỳnh took a long drag of her cigarette. _Don’t float away_ , she thought to herself. “It was finally discovered and raised to the surface in 2008.”

**2008**

_Where is Andromache?_

_She asked the question over and over. The men who'd discovered her had no answers for her._

_The boat approached an impossible city. Buildings, hundreds of them, as high as the sky. A giant green woman thrust a torch into the air above her._

_Men in trim dark suits stood on the pier, firearms resting in pockets on their hips. Behind them strange machines that flashed pulsing lights of crimson and cobalt assaulted her senses._

_Where is Andromache? Where are the others?_

_She lay in a bed on wheels. Instruments pierced her skin. Tiny knives sliced her open. She heeled._

_She sat in a cold chair of metal, her hands bonded together behind her back. Questions sounded on repeat in a strange form of English. Who are you? Where do you come from? How old are you?_

_Andromache? She was maddened by the very thought of her._

_Voices argued. What if there is a better way to harness this gift? What if this isn’t the way? What if she isn’t meant to be a weapon, but a savior? She will be a savior by being our weapon, Mr. Copley._

_Someone spoke some kind of incantation. Her mind fogged. She stalked. She fought. She killed. Who they were she didn’t know. Who she was… did she know?_

_Where is Andromache?_

**2020**

They were quiet for a painfully long time. Nile had no idea what to say. Quỳnh ‘s cigarette was long gone when Nile finally found the courage to speak again. Something to break the tension, she thought, was best. 

“How the hell do you know how to disable an iPhone’s antenna?”

Quỳnh looked up at her and chuckled, extremely grateful for the push to do so. 

“I’m a very quick study,” she explained. 

Nile’s mind raced, but she smiled all the same. She guessed Quỳnh would have to be that to get by in the world today. 

“Damn,” she responded, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know what to say, I’m… I’m sorry.”

Quỳnh closed her eyes and let that sentiment spill over her. It was filling her up, she realized. She had not had someone show her empathy and compassion in a very long time. She looked back up at Nile. 

“Me too,” she replied solemnly and stood once more. “See Nile, when people find out what we’re capable of, there are only ever two responses. Either they’re afraid of it, and try to destroy it. Or they envy it and try to wield it.”

Nile was still while she took in the weight of Quỳnh’s words. Quỳnh gathered the bag from the bed and the plane tickets on the nightstand. She hoisted the bag onto her shoulder. 

“And if you’re lucky to have someone who loves you unconditionally, like your mom…” Quỳnh said, handing Nile one of the tickets. Nile’s expression, as if predicting Quỳnh’s next words, fell with the anticipated weight of them. "Then she’s just something they can use to hurt you.”

They exited the room together in silence. Neither said another word until they reached the airport. 

  
  


**2010**

_Alarms blared. Doors locked. It was no matter. She knew how to get through them. They’d taught her well. She ran through the corridors until she found her way out. Cold air hit her face as she escaped the walls of Langley. That’s what they called it._

_Them._

_Fuck them. They’d tried to make her forget. Tried to destroy the most important thing about her. Her memory. Her heart. They thought they could push her out by driving_ _Quỳnh mad. Their mistake was in assuming Quỳnh had not been mad for centuries._ _She would not forget Andromache. She could never forget Andromache._

_She would find her, wherever she was in this world. She was still out there, with Yusuf and Nicolò. And with the new one. She would find them all._


	12. Secrets

Charlie was typically an early riser. In Canada, it wasn’t uncommon for her to wake up before the sun rose. Since she’d been living in Iceland, especially in the summer months when daylight lasted all night, she could get by on less than five hours of sleep. But lately, the vivid dreams of the young American Marine cut those hours nearly in half. 

And they were getting more vivid, she realized as she stepped out of her bedroom into the kitchen to fix herself some coffee. _Might as well stay up_ , she thought. She’d already tried to go back to sleep three times. The dreams kept waking her. It was like they were nagging at her. To do what, though, she wasn’t sure. 

Charlie sat at her kitchen counter sipping on her coffee, writing down as many details as she could. She was travelling, the girl. She was on a plane. It made some kind of emergency landing in the mountains. After that she’d had to hike. A long way. Charlie could almost feel her calluses in her feet. After, there was some kind of sea vessel. A freighter maybe? And then she was in a city, possibly in the middle east. 

She stopped writing. That was all she could remember seeing, but there was something else. Something important that she couldn’t put her finger on. Like a word on the tip of her tongue that just wouldn’t come to her. There was something going on at the edges of her dreams that left her with this vague but familiar itch. 

_I’m supposed to find this girl,_ she decided. She didn’t know why. She had no idea how. But she was somehow certain that not only was she supposed to, but she _would._

After the horses were fed their breakfast, she took inventory of all the weekly chores left still to do. Most had been well taken care of, and there were no tours on the docket for the day. Despite the sun shining bright overhead, there was a slight nip in the air. Another good day to just relax by the fire, she considered. 

But she’d used up all the chopped firewood the day before. She would need to chop some logs. No time like the present. She stepped into the barn to locate the axe. The second her hand touched the handle she was overcome with the vision of the young girl’s face, and now, finally the vague feeling she had before morphed into a picture, now a vague figure of another person. Man or woman, she couldn’t tell, but their presence was accompanied with that same itch. 

Charlie lifted the axe and swung. 

In the city, John woke in his dark room with the memory of two deep brown eyes swimming in his head. He was grateful he hadn’t seen the young woman die this time, felt her die more like it, but the same level of discomfort pulled him right out of the bed. He drew open the curtains, letting the light wash over him, as he took in a few deep, steadying breaths. 

For the past ten years, his most tormenting repeated thought was that he had a family. That there was someone out there he loved, and that he needed to find a way to get back to her. But like Charlie had once said about herself, it didn’t seem like there was anyone out there looking for him either. 

These dreams he was having, they were of the same woman over and over. A woman he couldn’t deny was incredibly beautiful. A woman he couldn’t deny a strange pull towards. A woman he couldn’t deny had died. 

Perhaps that was the answer. Perhaps that was the reason why he’d never been able to find the family he was searching for. Maybe this woman _had_ been his family. And now she was gone. 

John grabbed his tackle box and pole and decided to try to take his mind off things with some early morning fishing on the bay. He drove his rental car down to the Galicany beach. The first time he’d come to visit Charlie she brought him here. She told him how people come from all over the world to build rock pyramids, bringing their prayers and wishes. Charlie used six stones to build one, and offered the wish to him. He told her he didn’t have one, but secretly he wished for the only thing he ever wished for. To find them. 

Whoever “they” were. 

He recalled thinking it would be a great spot to fish, so every time he visited he was sure to bring his fishing gear. He found a perch on a hill of rocks to settle in for a relaxing morning. Every now and then he watched the tourists stop by to build their cairn, and this was how he managed to impale his thumb with a fishing hook while he’d been absentmindedly tying the line. 

“ _Merde_ ,” he said through a wince. 

He carefully opened his tackle box for his swiss army knife, and used the crimping pliers to cut the hook away so he could pull the rest of it out of his skin. He pulled his handkerchief out of his back pocket and used it to stifle the bleeding. _So much for fishing_. 

He tossed the bits of hook and tool back into the box, figuring he was going to have to return to the hotel for a bandage. He hadn’t ever thought to bring any. But when he lifted the handkerchief to steal a glance at his thumb he was aghast to see that it had completely healed. Not a trace of a wound. Not a scratch. He examined it closely, pressing it on the spot he’d punctured. No tenderness. No redness even. 

He hadn’t imagined it. The blood in the handkerchief and on the rocks by his feet were proof of that. 

Slowly, he pulled the swiss army knife back out of the tacklebox and opened the spearpoint blade. He brought it to that same spot on his thumb and sliced it a little. He felt the same sting as before. He watched a small amount of blood spill out slowly for a few seconds, and then it just stopped. He could feel his pulse crashing in his ears. 

“What the hell?”

One more time, he brought the blade to his palm and sliced it deep. It took a bit longer, but he nearly heaved at the sight of his skin knitting back together. For a fraction of an instant he was overcome with the memory of being stranded in the water. He was trying to grab onto a bit of rubble to help him stay afloat. It was difficult to grip. A familiar looking woman with short dark hair was bobbing in the water nearby. 

Back in Reykjavik, John tossed his tacklebox and pole in the backseat of his car. He jumped behind the wheel and drove out of the city. He needed to find Charlie. 

He had no idea what to think. He was completely terrified at what he’d seen. But it was the first time he could ever remember anything about the water. It had always seemed highly unlikely that he and Charlie could have been rescued from the ocean without having ended up there for the same reason. He still had no idea how they’d ended up there, but after seeing himself heal, he was fairly certain he now understood how he’d survived it. Charlie had too. If he could heal like this, maybe she could as well. 

He drove up the hill to the farm where she worked, passing a little blue car as it left. He parked haphazardly near the business office that received tourists and poked his head briefly inside. Nobody there. He ran up the stairs that led to the apartment above the reception office where she lived. 

“Charlie?” He knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. Of course not, she was probably working. 

He walked around the paddock. The horses were all outside in the arena. Some were grazing. Some were napping. 

“Charlie, you here?” He called again, poking his head inside the stables.

“John?” Her voice called back to him, curiously. 

“Yeah.”

“Back here!”

He followed her voice to the back of the stables where he found her pulling an axe out of the wooden walls. She turned to him with a friendly smile, which fell quickly when she saw the look on his face. 

“Hey. Woah, you alright?” She stepped closer to him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something strange happened to me,” he started, but was distracted suddenly when he took note of the axe in her gloved hands, recalling it plunging into the wall when he’d first arrived. “What are you doing?”

“Oh…” She looked down at the ax and then back up at him with a bit of a shrug. “Well, now that you mention it something strange happened to me too. Another bizarre skill reared its creepy head.”

“An axe skill?” John quirked a curious eyebrow.

“Yeah.” She pulled a bit of an apprehensive face. “Look at this.” 

Charlie raised the axe up to her eyeline taking aim. She centered herself with a steadying breath and threw it at the wall. The blade hit the wall with impressive precision in the exact same place she’d removed it from a moment ago. John stared at it with a slack jaw.

“Woah,” he said quietly after a beat. 

“That’s not all either,” Charlie replied. 

She retrieved the axe from the wall again and walked through the barn with purpose. He followed her until she stopped just outside. 

“Pick a spot,” she instructed him. 

“A spot for what?” He asked. 

“A target.” 

John took a moment to inspect his surroundings. 

“That tree,” he nodded his chin in the direction of a lone birch tree about thirty meters from the stables. 

“Alright, stand back.” Charlie took a few paces closer to the tree so that she was within throwing range. She tapped her foot gently before stepping with poise into a swing that saw her spin and lift the axe up in the air. She stopped abruptly, holding the axe perpendicular with the ground, still and calm. John kept his eyes on her curiously. She took one more step, held the axe out in front of her as she rotated slowly until she faced the tree again, made another quick spin and hurled the axe directly, hitting the trunk dead center. The handle jutted out, perfectly level with the ground below. 

John stared at it in bewilderment for a lengthy moment before he turned to her. She pursed her lips together humbly, raising her brows at him expectantly.

“…That’s normal, right?” She asked. “I shouldn’t be worried I can do that?”

John smirked. 

“Nah,” he answered, taking a step closer to her. “I mean, clearly you used to be a lumberjack.” 

“Right," she said with a chuckle. 

It was a call back to a conversation they’d had once years ago, after he’d discovered he could pick locks. 

_“That’s normal, right?” He’d asked her in mild concern. “I mean I shouldn’t be worried about having this kind of skill, should I?”_

_“Nah,” she’d replied, supportively. “Clearly you used to be a locksmith.”_

Charlie rested the axe against a chopping log and pulled off the leather gloves she was wearing as she walked back toward the farm’s business office. John followed. 

“What happened to you?” She asked. 

“What?”  
  
“What were you going to tell me?” She turned her head to him slightly as he moved forward to be in step with her. 

“It’s sort of difficult to…” He lost his train of thought when he noticed the bandage wrapped around Charlie’s left hand. “What did you do to your hand?”

“Oh.” She stopped walking and raised her hand to look at it. “I burned it last night, lighting a fire.”

“You did it last night?” He took her forearm gently in his hand. “Can I see it?”

“It’s not a big deal; it’s a small burn.”

“Can I see it?” He asked again. 

Charlie was taken aback slightly. He didn’t often make a fuss over her. He was chivalrous yes, but he had never babied her. He never treated her as incapable or in need of being taken care of. The concern on his face baffled her slightly, but she decided indulging him was the path of least resistance. 

“Yeah. Here.” She unwrapped the bandage to reveal a two inch burn on the back of her hand. It had blistered in one small spot, but the rest of it was fairly benign. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

John’s face was crestfallen. He held her under her palm and hovered his fingers over her injury in scrutiny. It looked to Charlie as if he was attempting to heal her with his mind. 

“Are you alright?” She asked, gently. “You were going to tell me something. It seemed important.”

He looked up into her eyes and released her hand. 

“No. It’s…” He shook his head. “It was nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

John felt completely lost. His mind had barely stopped racing since his fishing mishap earlier. Seeing Charlie’s newfound talent had been yet another bewildering discovery, but he felt somehow comforted by it. The consistency of them both continually learning these bizarre truths about themselves was a strange consolation. It constantly reminded him he wasn’t alone.

Now he felt more alone than ever. 

Charlie continued to watch him carefully.

“Well… I have a couple T-bone steaks I was thinking of putting on the grill,” she suggested. “Do you want to stay? Maybe sit by the fire with me? It was really nice last night.”

“No.” He shook his head, deliberately avoiding her eyes. “I can’t. I should get back.”

 _Get back where_ , Charlie wondered. She was the only person he knew in the entire country. 

“You got a hot date?” She asked facetiously. 

“No, I just…” He searched for a reason, any reason. He didn’t know why he felt the urge to run away. He supposed it was better to feel alone by himself than to feel alone with someone he loved. “Like you said, old habits.”

Charlie squinted and tilted her head at him. 

“There’s such a thing as self control,” she said with soft rebuke.

He nodded. “This is it.”

Charlie’s expression fell. She wasn’t going to argue with that. For all her talk of self control, old habits did seem to die hard. 

“Ok,” she conceded. “Well, listen, if you change your mind you know you can tell me anything.”

She held his gaze until he met her eyes again. She gave him a small smile.

“I mean, I just showed you my murder skills…”

He returned the smile and gave her an appreciative nod. “I’ll give you a call before I fly out.”

He kissed her lightly on the cheek and turned to walk away. Charlie watched him get back into his little rental car and drive down the hill back towards the city. It was a strange and sad way to say goodbye. He was clearly keeping something from her, but she couldn’t really begrudge him for it. She was keeping the dreams from him too. 

She looked at the pile of logs still yet to be chopped. Maybe she wouldn’t have a fire tonight, she decided. She was pretty beat from all that axe throwing, and she could certainly do with a full night’s sleep, if the dreams would allow it. 

They didn't. 

Sometime around 2am, Charlie’s eyes flew open. There was no commotion. No crisis. She was fairly calm when she woke. Nothing of huge consequence had seemed to happen, but Charlie’s heart fluttered in hope when she remembered what she’d seen. The image of the young girl and the mysterious other person boarding a jetway, under a sign reading “Geneva.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It made me smile thinking about Joe passing his love of fishing on to Booker, and Booker still finding comfort in it. 
> 
> (It occurred to me for the first time while writing this chapter that I’d made some mistakes about writing in a dark nighttime setting in previous chapters taking place in Iceland. Since this fic takes place in July, daylight would pretty much last all day, so I’ve gone back and revised those chapters.) 
> 
> Thanks everyone who's left kudos and comments. I can't tell you what they mean to me. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, a bit of a turning point!


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